Tax-supported medical care for California's children--where should it be going?

The multiplication of separate governmental agencies providing health services to California's children, the increasing difficulties in staffing tax-supported health agencies and the recent studies of the quality of care under these programs, have all pointed to an urgent need for prompt decisions on certain basic questions about the function of tax-supported medical care for children of dependent families. Fourteen separate kinds of health services are currently provided through public funds at an annual cost to California taxpayers of $52,000,000. These funds underwrite an uncoordinated, fragmented, patchwork quilt of medical care for some 500,000 children. Coordination and integration of these services through "one door" with uniform eligibility requirements and maximum utilization of private physicians' services that meet appropriate standards is needed now. California physicians have an urgent responsibility to provide leadership in the development of more effective and more economical organization and distribution of higher quality medical care services for California's children dependent on public support.