(essentially an HMO), and a plan which paid service providers, such as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans. One of the earliest examples is a 1910 "prepaid group plan" in Tacoma, Washington for lumber mills. Blue Cross (hospital care) and Blue Shield (professional service) plans began in 1929 with a prepaid plan with Baylor Hospital, spreading to other hospitals over the next several decades; these plans were largely independent of each other and controlled by statewide hospitals and physicians until the 1970s, when they became nonprofits before being converted into for-profit corporations such as Anthem. 1980s expansion and subdued inflation Managed care plans are widely credited with subduing medical cost inflation in the late 1980s by reducing unnecessary hospitalizations, forcing providers to discount their rates, and causing the health care industry to become more efficient and competitive. Managed care plans and strategies proliferated and quickly became nearly ubiquitous in the U.S. However, this rapid growth led to a consumer backlash. Because many managed care health plans are provided by for-profit companies, their cost-control efforts are driven by the need to generate profits and not providing health care. In a 2004 poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a majority of those polled said they believed that managed care decreased the time doctors spend with patients, made it harder for people who are sick to see specialists, and had failed to produce significant health care savings. These public perceptions have been fairly consistent in polling since 1997. In response, close to 900 state laws were passed regulating managed care in the 1990s. The backlash featured vocal critics, including disgruntled patients and consumer-advocacy groups, who argued that managed care plans were controlling costs by denying medically necessary services to patients, even in life-threatening situations, or by providing low-quality care. The volume of criticism led many states to pass laws mandating managed-care standards. Meanwhile, insurers responded to public demands and political pressure by beginning to offer other plan options with more comprehensive care networks—according to one analysis, between the years 1970 and 2005, the share of personal health expenditures paid directly out-of-pocket by U.S. consumers fell from about 40 percent to 15 percent. So, although consumers faced rising health insurance premiums over the period, lower out-of-pocket costs likely encouraged consumers to use more health care. Data indicating whether this increase in use was due to voluntary or optional service purchases or the sudden