ATLANTA - Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle on Thursday offered his proposals for making Georgia health care more available and more affordable.

The Republican's ideas are variations on programs in use.

"My desire is to create more competition, more products, more options where the individuals have the ability and access to the degree of insurance coverage which they need," he said in a speech to the Atlanta Press Club.

Mr. Cagle said Georgia is the sixth least-covered state, with 1.7 million people uninsured, about 21 percent of the population.

His approach would include state grants to create five clinics where poor patients could get treatment for the most common complaints found in emergency rooms, such as stomach, head or earaches, sore throat and upper respiratory infections. His goal is to get those patients out of costly emergency rooms.

The General Assembly has already encouraged the establishment of clinics by limiting their liability to lawsuits, and it is considering legislation to let them buy supplies sales-tax-free.

Mr. Cagle also announced plans to allow doctors and hospitals to market their services directly to patients, something already being done by Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine.

In the 1990s he instituted regulations that let health care providers set up mini-insurance companies with one-third of the up-front money required for traditional insurers, but the results have been mixed. He said providers can skip the insurance route and contract directly with patients to offer a set number of office visits, X-rays or other services.

Mr. Cagle also suggested a Web site where consumers could compare health insurance policies, something else Mr. Oxendine has tried. The insurance commissioner's site already offers comparisons for auto insurance, workers' comp and Medicare-supplement plans, but he said there are too many variables to figure out how to compare health policies.

Mr. Cagle said the online comparison is important to find affordable coverage.

"We believe the marketplace really allows them to fill out an application and to see at the end. It will give them more information and allow them to make better choices," he said.