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January 07, 2003 at 07:00 PM
NU Online News Service, Jan. 7, 2:37 p.m. – John Garamendi, California’s new insurance commissioner, is calling for his state to create a “single health insurance system” that will cover all residents 24 hours a day.
“Why is it that in modern America we are required to have four, five or six health care policies?” Garamendi demanded Monday at his inauguration in Sacramento, Calif.
U.S. consumers now use separate policies and programs to pay for treating illnesses, on-the-job injuries, injuries caused by other people off the job, and injuries caused by automobile accidents that are the consumers’ own fault, Garamendi said, according to a written version of his remarks.
Military veterans have yet another health finance system, and one-fifth of U.S. residents have no health coverage of their own, Garamendi added.
“This crazy quilt system of old, worn patches of coverage requires a legion of clerks backed up by a plethora of lawyers, each trying to place the cost on some other insurance company,” Garamendi said. “The current system is an expensive and inefficient hodgepodge of insurance coverage.”
