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Leumit Health Fund (Hebrew: לאומית שירותי בריאות, Leumit Sherutey Bri'ut, lit. National Health Maintenance Organization) is an Israeli HMO, founded in 1933 by the Revisionist Zionist Movement.
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History
Leumit Health Fund (Hebrew: לאומית) was established in 1933 in Dr. Yaakov Vinshal's kitchen in Tel Aviv - Israel by physicians who had been dismissed from their work in the General Health Fund (Clalit) at the time of the violent events following Arlosoroff's murder. Dr. Vinshal's clinic was the first clinic to belong to the Fund, which has advanced a long way since then.
In 1940 the poet Uri Tzvi Greenberg determined that the Fund's function is "to educate and to cure the bodies". Abba Ahimeir added: "The Jews must be taught to be healthy even when they are ill". Since then and to this day, Leumit Health Fund has been promoting health services and health education and providing the community with advanced medical services.
Back in the 1930s, its founders determined that the uniqueness of the Leumit Health Fund would be expressed by offering its members the right to select the fund, physician and medical services of their choice - a uniqueness that has remained to this very day.
The Fund's first manager, Mr. Melamedowitz, determined that the Fund would be open to everyone, and demanded that the employees and managers relate to the members of the Fund as acquaintances and not as numbers. The Fund indeed continues to pursue this path - a Fund whose doors are open to all residents of Israel, including new immigrants, city, kibbutz and settlement dwellers, the religious and ultra-religious, minority groups and secular Israelis.
Today
Leumit is one of the four health funds in Israel and has about 700,000 members. Leumit operates more than 300 medical centers and 100 pharmacies nationwide.