Kaiser Permanente was created during WW2 by Henry Kaiser, who would go on to create the Kaiser automobile company after the war, one of the failed car companies that were eventually rolled into American Motors (headed by George Romney).
Kaiser Permanente is based in Oakland California (ring any bells?) and has been an outlyer in the health care business but very influential in health care policy – they have an entirely different concept – that we know today generally as the HMO or managed care provider.
Kaiser is an end-to-end provider – if your employer buys coverage from them, Kaiser does everything. They own the hospitals, they own the clinics, they employ the doctors, they make the decisions what you do or don’t get. They pay the costs of running their facilities rather than operating as an insurer that processes claims and writes checks. They really want to see health care provided the way they do it, not the way the competitor Blue Cross/Shield (which was started by and for doctors) does 3rd party payment.
Because Kaiser is very directly affected by people’s lifestyle choices, they play an active role in trying to formulate public policy to reduce their costs. They have about 9 million people covered by their system, mostly in California, but also in the DC area.