With the future of the distinctive “Gold Building” (formerly BlueCross) on the west side of downtown Chattanooga in the news these days, it is interesting to recall its very significant place in our local medical history.
For nearly half a century before World War II, the Baroness Erlanger Hospital on East Third Street and, later, T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital were the primary local public hospitals serving most of the people of our area.
Chattanooga’s city government and Hamilton County’s government jointly “chipped in,” usually reluctantly, from their property tax collections, to cover the costs of medical care for people who couldn’t pay — the “charity patients.”
The paying patients covered their own hospital bills, plus some “extra” to help cover total Erlanger and Children’s Hospital costs.
In the early days of World War II, Roy McDonald, the founder and publisher of The Chattanooga Free Press, and owner of the Home Stores grocery chain, was called upon to become the unpaid civic volunteer chairman of Erlanger and Children’s hospitals.
He found city and county governments hesitant to appropriate enough money to assure top-quality hospital service for the nonpaying patients. So McDonald looked for some additional way to finance excellent local hospital care for everyone.
His solution was to establish BlueCross and BlueShield of Tennessee, a nonprofit health insurance system, not just locally, but for most of Tennessee.
McDonald spent many months visiting Tennessee business leaders to persuade them to contribute company insurance payments for their employees, and to invite employee contributions, to provide doctor and hospital insurance coverage for participants.
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee grew to occupy a number of local office buildings and have many employees scattered throughout Chattanooga, serving most of the state.
Happy success for patients led to a need for more BlueCross office space.
World-famous architect John Portman of Atlanta was called. He wanted something distinctive. The result was the unique “Gold Building” on the west side of downtown Chattanooga, where it would be seen daily from the highway. (McDonald, a distinct traditionalist in every way, never liked it.)
As BlueCross service to Tennesseans prospered, BlueCross outgrew the Gold Building. The result was construction of the very impressive new BlueCross BlueShield state headquarters building sprawling across the top of Cameron Hill downtown.
Now, plans are being made for the future use of the Gold Building.
Today, many thousands of Tennesseans have both good medical and good economic reasons to give thanks for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, with its state headquarters in Chattanooga, helping to provide the best in health care for many thousands of Tennesseans, plus many Chattanooga jobs.