May 29, 1946 - A contract between the United Mine Workers and the U.S. government established one of America’s first union medical and pension plan. The multi-employer UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund would permanently change health care delivery in the coal fields of the nation. The UMWA Fund built eight hospitals in Appalachia, established numerous clinics and recruited young doctors to practice in rural coal field areas. A 1977 Presidential Commission found that the UMWA Fund had allowed miners to succeed "in obtaining for themselves a quality of health care comparable to that of many sectors of the industrial population."