Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

“Universal Heal Care” brewing in San Fransciso

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News of this alarming development should be of some interest to universal-health-care advocates at BMG.  As you know, I certainly do not include myself in that group.

Nontheless, San Francisco’s experiment will certainly be instructive to our own reform efforts.

My prediction about SF’s plan: it’ll spark employer flight from the city limits, attract indigents (already a huge problem in SF), stimulate job loss in general, put capacity and financial pressure on health care providers, and toss the city budget into chaos.

I’d be interested to hear other BMG predictions.

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Comments

  1. Retail isn’t going far.  After all, people who live in SF do buy stuff.

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    Manufacturing?  Is there any?

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    Hi-tech: they are likely already providing health insurance.  Can SF’s new policy allow the companies to lower their payments to insurance companies?  If so, their net cost change might be little.

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    I think if any city can pull it off, it just might be SF.  Who knows — with all this health care, maybe rents will go up due to increased demand, squeezing poor people out of SF.  It might also reduce traffic, in the sense that morning rush hour into the city might be just as dense as morning rush hour out!

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    Generally speaking though, you need a bigger area, since systems like this are exploited at the edges (boundaries), and so you need to maximize the percent of people not within x miles of the boundary so they are less likely to want to move out.

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    I wonder if SF can get Berkeley and other nearby towns to join in as well, slowly expanding the mass of enlightened health care services to take up more and more of CA.

  2. Harmony and understanding.  Mystic chrystal something something, and the mind’s true revelayayshun, Aqua. . . Oh, sorry.  It will certainly be interesting to see whether this is a problem that can be addressed on the municipal level.  I make no predictions.

  3. seem like putting the middle pole in the tent… all the water on the canvas runs to the edges…

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    how will SF keep from becoming a ghost town?  Or will it be a town of doctors and sick people?

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    I’m having a hard time projecting the impact of this…

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    My own economics – If I were gainfully employed in SF, I’d stay.

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    If I owned a business it would depend a great deal on how much it cost me vs the current benefits…

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    I can’t see lots of people just up and flowing into SF for the healthcare (some will)…

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    Hmmmm

  4. You just made it for us.

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    That is, if EVERY employer in the country had to pay in to a government universal health care system (which would inevitably cost LESS to administer than our current private system, which is 30% administrative cost and increasing), then there would be no competative advantage in one city vs. another city. EVERYone would be playing in a fair playing field. This is also why tax loopholes should be closed. It isn’t hurtful to competition for everyone to be playing by the same rules.

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    For instance, when one city bans smoking in all public places including bars and restaurants, businesses complain because they perceive (probably correctly) they might lose business to surrounding cities and towns. However, if the whole STATE bans smoking in all bars and public places, then everyone is playing by the same rules – the smokers will still come to the bar in the first city if that’s their inclination because the ban is in place everywhere equally.

    • if EVERY employer in the country had to pay in to a government universal health care system (which would inevitably cost LESS to administer than our current private system, which is 30% administrative cost and increasing),

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      You know, even if you believe it and even if you have experts out the wazoo who say you’re right, the “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to save you money” just doesn’t sell.

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      My 2 prediction for San Fran: 

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      First, San Fran is actually a city that could pull it off:  A destination city.  Big restaurant and hotel and tourist biz.  Big biz already provides insurance and the small businesses are primarily service related. Small biz would increase the cost of their hotel rooms, and menus, and convenience stores, and retail products.  San Fran would become a more expensive place to visit.

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      Second, someone at Town Hall will grow a brain and decide that the plan is too risky to S.F.’s small businesses to opt for city-wide Universal Health.  Risk injuring your small business owners to help the poor while big biz has no horse in the race?  Not likely, not even in S.F.   

      • overwhelming support among the American public for single-payer, universal health care. And many major automobile manuracturers have abandoned the U.S. for Canada–a massive savings per employee in health care costs makes it mandatory.

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        If you’re arguing that we have become a nation too stupid and too knee-jerk to do anything right anymore, I’m not necessarily going to disagree with you there.

    • people!
      is it any coincidence that the u.s. is the only developed nation with tens of millions of uninsured and hundreds of millions of underinsured, and the only nation that demands that employers shoulder a direct responsibility for their employees access to healthcare?

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      let’s get business out of healthcare delivery.

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      until this anachronistic system is finally sent to the dustbin of history, the talk of truly universal and equitable access to healthcare will only be so much lipstick on a very expensive and unwieldy pig.

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      and that is why ( . . even though the kneejerks will find this nearly impossible to comprehend) a streamlined single payer system is the most BUSINESS FRIENDLY solution proposed.

  5. The SF community has worked hard to lead the way to build a citizen led movement and enact state-wide universal healthcare coverage using the most cost-effective, equitable, and sustainable way of paying for it.

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    The email below is from a citizen-activst friend out there who we activists in MA work with, sharing info and strategies about how to not get totally crushed by the medical-industrial complex in our health reform efforts to put people’s healthcare needs and interests before those of hugely wealthy and powerful corporate interests.

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    Profit-driven insurance co’s, Pharma, and hospital systems are doing just great under the wasteful and dysfunctional market-driven corporate model that dominates HC and gobbles up our HC spending with an insatiable appetite.  It’s ordinary people who are getting soaked and who are living sicker, shorter lives due to being uninsured.  Why bother to change that?

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    —  from Don Bechler
    Chair – California Universal Health Care Organizing Project
    Chair – Health Care for All [the real deal]- SF chapter
    415-695-7891

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    On Tuesday, July 18, the City and County of San Francisco passed a resolution for SB 840, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act.  SB 840 is universal health care with single payer streamlined financing.  SF had previously supported SB 921, the predecessor to SB 840. 

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    The resolution comes 8 days after the San Francisco Labor Council unanimously passed a resolution for SB 840 and the HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act which is also referred to as the Medicare for All Act.

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    We are two steps closer to winning universal health care with single payer steamlined financing.

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    These resolutions come just 4 weeks before we hope to win a vote in the California State legislature on SB 840.  43 of the 120 legislators in Sacramento are co-authors of SB 840.

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    We need your help to win the August vote in Sacramento on SB 840. [Ann says: Please ask all your friends in CA–we Boston folk have a lot of them, right? — Forward this on!]

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    p>  Write and send a stamped letter to your Assembly Member asking them to vote for SB 840, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act.

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    A personal letter is 50 times more effective than a computer generated response.  You canfind your Assembly Member by going to http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

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    All letters can be addressed to Assembly Member(their name); State Capitol; Sacramento, CA 95814

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    Please let us know to whom you have sent a letter.

  6. health care for far too long as a profession, I’m skipping on this dialogue so that those who aren’t burned out can take the lead.

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    But, I will say this.  Bob, you get the star of the day for best snark yet on this site:

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    (Someone needs to think about the health care needs of those of us still around after the Rapture. – promoted by Bob)

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    Sincerely yours in post-rapture prosperity and wealth,

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    cgb

  7. there are plenty of active political creatures out there who choose not to spend their time on BMG.  These two are willing to share their perspectives on the recent July 12, 2006, ConCon vote to send the citizens’universal coverage Health Care Amendment to “study” rather than to vote on its merits:

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    Friends,
    I just had a long heart to heart with my Rep. Frank Smizik…. he says he feels badly, but will not apologize as he had to what he had to do to save other bills, etc etc.

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    He reiterated all the ways he had supported the health care amendment, then talked about the leadership vote and what that means to him as a chair of a committee, and that he has to vote with leadership if he wants to get his other bills passed, he voted at the end etc etc.

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    He said he will work to get the amendment out of the hole it is in but he doubts that will happen because the leadership is worried about potential suits for noncompliance.

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    I pointed out that they should be worried about all the folks who will be punished for not “buying health insurance” [in the brave new world of Chapter 58 health reform] and we went around and around on all the usual stuff…. including pitting causes against each other….

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    He seems fully aware that Chapter 58 is full of large disasters but says it was the best that could be passed at this time.

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    I felt slightly more depressed at the end of the call, if only for the immorality of the political process.

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    and there’s more from another seasoned political activist:

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    p>  I wonder what the debate would have sounded like in 1855 if our current state legislators were alive and voting on abolition.

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    p>  It might have gone something like this,

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    p>  “Well we have to be mature and sensible. It would be crazy to free all the slaves at once.  Why what would those poor slave owners do if they couldn’t get workers?  They’d have to move their tanneries out of state.

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    p>  We can’t risk losing landowners either.  They need those slaves to harvest their crops.  We’d all go hungry.

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    p>  We can’t afford to bankrupt the state.  Let’s just free the slaves that are cleaning houses.  We don’t have to pay them much and we can still say we’ve done something for the slaves.

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    p>  Aye! Aye!  We  don’t want to sound like rash liberals.  Let’s study  the issue a little longer.”

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    With Dems like these, who needs Rebuplicans?

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    John Bonifaz for Sec. of State, anyone?
    http://www.johnbonifaz.com

  8. The solution of public funding of health care is always given out before the discussion of the problem.  Why is health care so expensive that most people need expensive insurance to get through life? 

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    Is it because the AMA manages a government sponsored monopoly of the amount of doctors by control of the amount of medical schools, the number of people that are allowed to study at these schools?  Is it because the government allows drug companies preferential control over their markets?  Is it because government sponsored controls such as HIPPA made the administration of health care so complex in an age of computerized controls that record keeping is prone to expensive error and correction?

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    But, maybe these government programs in San Francisco or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are the answer.  After all, boondoggles are a thing of the past, just like government corruption. 

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    I’m reminded of the time then prime minister Trudeau of Canada spoke at a doctors’ conference in Florida about the joys of socialized medicine in Canada.  Why was he in Florida?  Well, his own, US, doctor practiced in Florida and he was down there to get a checkup.  Canada doctors were good enough for other Canadians, though.

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    Oh, I can hardly afford health care now.  I won’t be able to afford it when it is “free”.

    • because it smacks of just one more targeted smear agoinst a cost-effective and humane (universal coverage) healthcare system that spends HALF AS MUCH PER PERSON than we do inthe U.S. and is getting MUCH BETTER HEALTH STATUS outcomes for their money. (see WHO report comparing country’s HC systems).

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      No, teh Canadian system’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the mess we’ve got.  And to think that we’re spending twice as much for it!!
      —
      gallowsglass said

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      “I’m reminded of the time then prime minister Trudeau of Canada spoke at a doctors’ conference in Florida about the joys of socialized medicine in Canada.  Why was he in Florida?  Well, his own, US, doctor practiced in Florida and he was down there to get a checkup.”

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      AnnEM said

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      “yeah, right”

  9. The government “leadership” we now have in control at the Mass. State House is soon going to be exposed as being capable of–and guilty of–nefarious acts and willful obstruction of the democratic process.

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    These acts, done willfully and knowingly–and at the behest of power brokers from the corporate community–include enacting “special rules” well below the public radar screen that served to obstruct voting rights on the healthcare amendment.

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    One can hope that the rank and file legislators were not aware of the groundwork that was being laid leading to the secret yet premeditated act to try and kill the citizens’ initiative healthcare constitutional amendment.

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    The scoundrals and their tactics will not prevail!  Mark my words.

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