Our health care system is broken, and its repair must safeguard and enhance the coverage middle-class Californians depend on while making sure that everyone who needs insurance gets it. More than 7 million Californians have no access to quality health care, and for others, costs are soaring. A reasonable and compassionate system can hold down costs while providing for everyone.

To improve health care in California, Dominic Caserta proposes:

• Establishing a comprehensive universal system that balances quality and costs savings with fairness and accountability.
• Expanding the system of affordable, community-based health clinics to provide immunizations, preventive care, pregnancy tests and other services. This approach saves time and money by relieving the strain on doctors' offices and emergency rooms.
• Increasing consumer choice by requiring insurers to cover alternative medicine such as naturopathy, chiropractic and other therapies that succeed where standard medicine might not. This approach builds upon a bill by Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Los Angeles, that requires group health-care coverage of acupuncture.
• Including dental and other oral care in all health coverage.
• Reducing bureaucracy and increase access by setting a timetable for health-care companies to digitize their records.
• Preventing insurers from dropping patients with pre-existing conditions.

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