For the past few months I have been holding town hall forums across California and no matter where I go, the issue of health care is front and center. These concerns are getting more pronounced and more passionate as the weeks wear on and unemployment continues to rise. People are losing their employer-based health care and COBRA is a temporary and expensive stopgap measure that is stressing already maxed-out family budgets.
The need for bold programs addressing the health care crisis was brought into focus by a new UC Berkeley report showing that more than 500,000 Californians have lost their health care since the start of the recession.
In the past five years, we have worked hard to provide universal health care in San Francisco through our Healthy San Francisco program. We have now enrolled over 38,000 of our city's estimated 60,000 uninsured. It's a great start but there is still much work to do here in San Francisco and across California as the new UC Berkeley report clearly lays out.
On my Green 960 radio show this week I talked with Lloyd Dean, the head of Catholic Healthcare West, Mitch Katz, Director of San Francisco Department of Public Health and Tangerine Brigham, Director of Healthy San Francisco about how to bring the "Healthy SF" model to other cities and towns throughout California.
As we discuss on the show, a critical next step for any city or town looking to replicate Healthy SF is to start organizing their community health clinics. Community clinics have historically provided services to uninsured and underserved populations. It's important for any health care effort at the local, state or federal level to include these crucial providers.
I hope you will listen to the show and let us know your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section as we work to create better health care service here and universal health care across California. As the President and Congress move to reform the health care system in Washington - the time is now to let your voice be heard.
Listen to Mayor Newsom's Green 960 radio show online or subscribe to his weekly policy discussions on iTunes. Join Mayor Newsom on Facebook. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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Next governor of California, probably.
After Obama, the next Democratic President will be a woman.
Gavin will miss that boat, as others have before him, on timing.
Given the economy, I would have much preferred that Newsom had addressed the homeless issue her.
Early in Newsom's first term, he worked to extend the city-funded health insurance program, started under Mayor Brown, to young adults, a program that had been previously offered only to children. Newsom's more ambitious plan on healthcare began to take shape in 2007. In his budget proposal for fiscal year 2007-2008, Newsom announced his intention to provide universal health care for all city residents, based on long-time City Supervisor Tom Ammiano's plan. The care will be provided through the San Francisco Health Access Plan.[34][35]
Newsom’s Health Access Plan, also known as Health San Francisco, shares the cost with workers and businesses using federal, state, and city funds and savings to provide healthcare insurance to all San Franciscans. The system plans to use more electronic referrals, focus on preventive care, and work to provide care to San Francisco’s 82,000 uninsured adults.[36] Newsom's proposal has prompted Oakland mayor Ron Dellums and San Mateo County's Board of Supervisors to look into possibilities for providing their own taxpayer-subsidized health care.[37][38]
In February 2008, Newsom, also a restaurateur, signed a measure, backed by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, to ask San Francisco restaurants to voluntarily ban trans fats from their kitchens.[39]
The doctors, of course, would be dead set against such a plan, even tho it would help them out too. . .
While we encourage, support, and participate in local programs such as Healthy San Francisco, we must also press national leaders to institute universal single payer national health care.
Why is it so difficult to understand that we can have better health care for everyone and spend less? Why do we blind ourselves to the success of national health care in Europe and Canada? Why don't we understand the competetive disadvantage industry faces because of the financial burden of employee health care? Why can't we understand that healthy workers are more productive? Why can't we understand that a system of universal health care emphasizing inexpensive preventive medicine will decrease the need for expensive interventions? Why can't we see the educational advantages of providing preventive and interventional health care to all students? Why do we remain blind to the social impact of inadequate health care on the poor?
We cannot afford to fail in this, our fundamental obligation to our fellow man.
We must do what we can in the time we have.
No wonder few people want to become engineers in this country. No wonder the best students want to become doctors and lawyers, rather than engineers. But, how long can we stay as a strong country without producing and inventing new things? and with chornic budget deficit and huge debts?
The government can preach the fun of science and technology, but unless the professional prospect improves, the young people are not that stupid.
Single payer universal health care NOW.
Britain covers ALL their people for $2540 per citizen.
We don't need more money. We don't need to take on the insurance companies. We just need to take the >50% monopoly that the government already has and the $850 billion they're already spending, and reform it so that it's enough to cover everyone.
We can't save more by spending more. Especially when we're already spending more now than we need to. If bureaucrats think they can cut costs, then show us now. Don't tell us you can save us money and refuse to do so.
I have been a big fan of yours, and of California politics in general as relates to health care issues. Your governor Schwarzenegger deserves some credit for allowing issues such as medical marijuana and DIe with Dignity Rights to thrive in California. As a disabled person, I am very much aware that there will come a time, sooner rather than later, when I will have to consider moving to California to take advantage of these policies, which may not be implemented in my state any time soon. On a national level, however, I am much less confident in the process to reform health care, due to people's greater concern of cost over care. In other words, regardless of what system we use to work our way as a nation toward universal health care, I am concerned that services, medicine and technology will be cut in the pursuit of even further lower cost. This scares me, and should be a red flag to the 20% of the US population (that's 1 in 5) who are considered disabled. Services are already being cut, and treatments are becoming less and less available, and I fear that this will lead us into a situation where the disabled will suffer the greatest losses of population, in order to serve the majority healthy population
Not only is it the moral thing to do
But it would also serve as a much more effective stimulus than what Obama is doing now
The number 1 cause of home foreclosure is healthcare costs, not to mention people who are just in debt but not going bankrupt. So it would be a very effective housing fix
Apart from that it would rescue much of our industry.
Take GM for example. If they didn't have to pay out helathcare costs for current or retired workers anymore they would not be facing bankruptcy. And after a while of getting their books strait, they would infact be able to raise the salary of their employees. Thus actual stimulus
The problem with our healthcare system is the same as our financial system. The insurance and lending companies are not solvent. Unfortunately we need them in our markets, but we have no need for them in our healthcare system. With one step we could be rid of them and get the stimulus package we need
The government spends enough to implement single payer right now, in house. What are they waiting for? The approval of the insurance companies?
American healthcare is the most expensive and the inefficient in the modern world ; How else do explain it except for the obvious structural difference?
You don't see a parallel between the debt bubble for the housing market and the debt bubble for health insurance?. How if everyone had to pay their bill the numbers wouldn't add up because the lending industry is run so poorly?