Unimed is a Brazilian
medical work
cooperative
A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...
and
health insurance
Health insurance or medical insurance (also known as medical aid in South Africa) is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance, risk is shared among ma ...
operator. It is considered the largest of its kind in the world, with more than 105,000 affiliated
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
s, 386 branches and more than 15 million beneficiaries. Its name is a composite of ''união'' and ''médicos'' (
Portuguese for "union" and "physicians").
Created as an alternative against
capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
-based health plans, the cooperative was founded in 1967 in the city of
Santos, state of
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...
, by Edmundo Castilho.
History
With the propose to guarantee the freedom and dignity of healthy professionals and structure improvements needed by the sector at finish of 1960 decade, a doctors group affiliated to Santos Doctors Sindicate (Sindicato dos Médicos de Santos), in Sao Paulo State, sought in cooperativism an alternative model of Management based on ethics, without aim of profit and with an emphasis on the social role of medicine.
That is why, on December 18, 1967, Edmundo Castilho and 22 other doctors founded the Union of Doctors - Unimed, with Castilho as the first president.
The board of Unimed Santos went to visit cities interested in adopting the model of cooperativism and soon the Unimed expanded, first by the interior of the State and then for the rest of the Country.
In order to organize institutionally all the federations and Single companies, which began to be created at the beginning of the decade, the Unimed of Brazil was founded on November 28, 1975, during a meeting of members.
External links
Unimed Official Homepage(In Portuguese)
Cooperatives in Brazil
Medical and health organisations based in Brazil
Health insurance companies
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