Mayor announces launch of universal healthcare for San Francisco

[nebula]

San Francisco may get universal health care

Posted 7/7/2006 1:05 AM ET
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — The mayor who roiled the culture wars by sanctioning gay marriages has taken on another fractious political issue that bedevils national policymakers: heath care for the uninsured.

Mayor Gavin Newsom wants San Francisco to become the first city in the nation to provide coverage for a growing and increasingly costly segment of the population: adults with no health insurance or other means of paying for doctor visits, surgeries, catastrophic illness and prescription drugs.

The uninsured — an estimated 45.8 million people across the USA and 82,000 here — increasingly drain the budgets of cities and counties whose hospital emergency rooms and clinics bear the brunt of costs for treating them.

Newsom says his plan, unveiled June 20, could reduce — or at least slow the rise in — those costs by encouraging more primary and preventive care. As he puts it, "not waiting until the ulcer bursts to go to the doctor."

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Here's another article on the subject.

[alittlelark]

1. KPFA has been following the story for awhile.

I hope it all works out - there are still a few kinks, and it wouldn't be 100%, but a dramatic improvement nonetheless.

[Rainscents]

2. Yay for SanFrancisco!

[Pachamama]

3. Yeah Mayor McDreamy! (Stephanie Miller's name for him!)

Because in addition to being a visionary, he's sexy as hell!

:hi:

[Nevernose]

4. How to pay? And other major problems:

According to the 2nd article, 400 doctors now treat 52,000 people (MediCal). How are they going to cover an ADDITIONAL 82,000 people?

And how is San Francisco going to pay for it? While I'm no expert, having only been there a couple of times, it's not only the best city I've ever been to but also the most expensive. I would be living there right now if it weren't so extraordinarily expensive. I don't know if that's from taxes or just the way big cities work (okay, I'm a hick :) ), but anything more would seem to me to be crushing people. The guy at the pizza place I ate at one night told me that he can't afford to live anywhere near San Francisco itself; he commutes from somewhere near Oakland. He also told me that, as a teacher, I would also have to commute from Oakland if I wanted to have any kind of normal living space.

It may be a good start, but the only way to make health care truly viable is to make it truly national.

And congratulations to Mayor Newsom: he's got balls of steel, and I wish more people, politicain and average citizen alike, would take up the plight of the working poor.

[iconoclastNYC]

5. I'm worried about this.

You can't find a bigger supporter of UNIVERSAL/Single-payer healthcare than me HOWEVER;

I'm worried that doing it on a city level as opposed to state level or national level could create a huge failure and then give the GOP a great PR coup to dismiss it as impossible.

I hope it they really thought it out and it goes well.