Ex-HEW Secretary Seeks Law to Give Health Insurance to All

A former federal health chief called Monday for a minimum health care law to ensure that all Americans have at least some health insurance.

Although most people are covered by private or government plans, an estimated 37 million have no insurance, and it is these people that Joseph A. Califano Jr. said must be brought under some type of national health care umbrella.

Inadequate for Needs

In addition, millions have private insurance that is inadequate to meet their needs, the Carter Administration health, education and welfare secretary said.

“What we need is a minimum health care law, just as we have a minimum wage law,” Califano said. “Let’s simply require that each employer assure its employees of a minimum level of health care: physician treatment, hospitalization, preventive services for the employee and his or her family.”

Committee Hearing

Califano was among the witnesses outlining a variety of health needs before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee at its first hearing since Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) became chairman with the convening of the 100th Congress.

The first witness was 21-year-old Michelle Muir of Hyattsville, Md., who gave birth prematurely in her bathroom last year and still faces more than $400,000 in medical bills, even after her insurance and her husband’s have paid all they will pay. The baby, who weighed 1 1/2 pounds at birth, had extensive medical problems.

Kennedy called the young Muirs and three other people as the panel’s first witnesses to illustrate how working and retired Americans can be caught in a trap of doctor and hospital bills from which they can never escape.

He said at the outset that the committee will become immersed in “statistics and flow charts” as it writes health-care legislation but that the panel’s concern “is mostly about people.”

‘Living in Fear’

After the five witnesses recounted their experiences, Kennedy thanked them for sharing the kind of personal grief that people prefer to keep private. “All of these people we heard are working men and women . . . and are living in fear,” he said.

Califano said their testimony illustrated that the United States has “a pothole system of medical care . . . and they’re savage potholes because they shatter people’s lives.”