ABSTRACT
In 1961, four men set out for a game of golf. Two were real estate agents; two, young lawyers from a prestigious Louisville, Kentucky, law firm. That golf game was the beginning of what was to become an international corporation with $2.6 billion in annual revenue—Humana, Incorporated. Only a few years later, in 1968, two Nashville doctors met with Jack Massey, a founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, was bom. By 1984, HCA owned or managed 260 hospitals in 41 states and grossed more than $3.9 billion from its hospitals and nursing homes. By the mid-1980s, proprietary hospitals controlled 12 percent of the acute care hospital market in the United States, 21 percent in the South.
