I've been in our nation's capital this week meeting with Obama Administration officials and Congressional leaders about national health care reform. Everywhere I go, from the White House to the Department of Labor to the U.S. Senate, I get the same question: can San Francisco's universal health care program, Healthy San Francisco, be scaled?
The answer is yes.
Truly, one of the strongest aspects of Healthy San Francisco (HSF) is its simplicity. The program allows participants to select their primary care provider from among dozens of local hospitals and clinics, both public and private. Our local system does not require lengthy HMO paperwork and there is no denial of treatment based on pre-existing medical conditions.
A recent study showed that Healthy San Francisco is dramatically less expensive than traditional insurance. And our experience in San Francisco is proving what most Americans already know - it is much less expensive to keep people well than it is to treat their sickness, particularly when so much treatment for uninsured Americans is provided in costly emergency rooms.
There are currently more than 40,000 participants in HSF. We are enrolling approximately 600 new participants every week. We have already enrolled more than half of the previously uninsured San Franciscans and the vast majority will have access to health care by the end of next year.
I believe that administration and congressional leaders understand that we cannot wait for health care reform. Our health care crisis affects every aspect of our society - from making sure every child receives the health care they need to succeed in school, to decreasing the financial burden on business, both large and small, so our economy can get back on track.
I know there is pressure in Washington to wait until the economy improves before we act on health care reform. I faced many of the same pressures when I was working with allies in San Francisco to forge our universal health care delivery system.
But "waiting" in politics usually means never - and we simply cannot afford to wait any longer. The lessons we are learning in San Francisco shows that investing in health and wellness is its own kind of economic stimulus.
The time is now to tackle this problem and I applaud President Obama for promising to sign a national health care reform bill by October. We cannot wait for change - the President needs your help. Sign the petition to support President Obama's call for health care reform.
One of the key figures leading the charge in Congress is Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. I spoke with Sen. Harkin on my Green 960 radio show this week about the challenges Congress and the administration face and the possibility of using HSF as a model for a national program. You can listen to the show online or via iTunes.
For my part, I was recently made Chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Task Force on Health Care Reform. Cities often have the most pressing health care needs and have had to adapt and innovate in lieu of national health care reform. I am looking forward to working with my fellow Mayor's to hear what they have learned in their cities and share what we've learned in my hometown through Healthy San Francisco.
In the end, the task force will identify urban health care priorities and advise the work of Congress and the Administration to help solve this crucial challenge we all share. As always, please feel free to give me your input and feedback in the comments section below.
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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Outrageous!
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/ed-schultz-insurance-companies-are-ta
I don't know why this is so hard to understand. Health care for all is cheaper by far than our current caste based system.
Thinkagain2, you should shout that at the top of your lungs every chance you get. The Big Lie is that if we don't pay for social programs, we don't pay at all. It's the basis of the Republican platform. If you don't try to fix things through taxes and government programs, the theory goes, you keep your money.
Well, that isn't the case. if you don't pay for education now, you pay for prisons later. If you don't pay for health care now, you pay higher premiums later. If you don't pay to do something about the horrific poverty and social stagnation that greed has wrought, you pay for taller fences, a home security system, a hidden premium from stores who shoplifters target, more police, etc.
We wastes too much time as Democrats ad Progressives, pretending that the Right has an equally valid point that's up for debate. We need to step up and show Republican ideology for what it is -- a means of keeping the hyper-wealthy wealthy, while the rest of us deal with the realities below. For us, it isn't a choice between paying or not paying. It's a choice between paying now in an attempt to actively make the country better or paying later in an attempt to just keep it from collapsing.
YOU ALREADY ARE PAYING......in a dramatically reduced quality of life. the emergency rooms you rely on are grossly overburdened. the economy is in the toilet in part because businesses in this country have astronomical costs associate with healthcare benefits so they cannot compete with other nations. HMO's and insurance companies are reaping HUGE profits, while America gets increasingly less healthy. you're not thinking this through, and your knee-jerk republican stance about bootstrapping and welfare doesn't hold any water any longer. surely it's not your job as a tax payer to prop up executives from goldman sachs, but yet you do it. we've had 8 years of doing it the "right" way.......now let the smart people have a crack at it.
Anyone wanting to use existing systems can continue to pay for and use them.
Costs of health care paid for by government programs, (Medicare-Medicaid etc.) and proposed free government care could be reduced to a fraction of current expenditures, with better outcomes, if the services for these programs were delivered from a VA style National Health Care System.
A VA style National Health Care System, which controls the problems with access, cost, quality, and malpractice, is THE solution for America’s healthcare problems.
Businesses choosing national health care as the provider for their employees would be freed from the expense and hassles of being involved in any way for the health services their employees receive.
The Best Care Anywhere is an article by Phillip Longman that documents how the VA was transformed by Dr. Kizer, into a system that is producing the highest quality health care in the country. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.longman.html
The system could be jump started by acquiring health delivery systems around the country that would choose to sell to the new National Health Care System.
Can you show me a plan in the entire world that doesn't have copays or coinsurance?
Canda has out of pocket expenses, so does the UK, Germany, Japan, Tiawan France ......need I go on? Your wants out pace the reality of the world.
Have you even spent one ounce of energy looking at how the rest of the world works or is your head so far up the canal that you don't want to see?
My last procedure under my employers plan cost me about $400 out of pocket. It happened to be my only claim for the year, so it included the $200 annual deductible. The bills were distributed among 4 different medical practices, each of which had to bill both me and the insurance provider for our respective fractions. There are about 850 medical insurance providers in the country and the medical practice has to know how to bill each one. Waste of effort.
Try this for comparison: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/healthcare/healthcare_profiles.html
When I broke my ankle and needed surgery (plate and screws), all I had to pay was $35 for renting crutches for six weeks.
Dentistry and glasses are not covered except for children of low income in some provinces, so many people have some sort of additional plan to cover these, usually through work, because $1600 or so for a root canal and crown is a bit much all at once.
When are you going to apologize for tanking the No on 8 campaign?
Shouldn't you be dealing with San Francisco's huge budget deficit instead of spending a week outside the state?
I might be naive, but I think having a president who watched his mother fight with insurance companies as she was dying of cancer, is going to make the difference this time.
I'm rooting for you, though! I'd like to see this happen.
Watch Michael Moore's "Sicko," and you'll see how countries like Canada, Great Britain and France deal with this issue, and how their people REALLY feel about their "socialist" health care system.
We've been lied to by the few who profit obscenely from people's misery.
My neighbor just had two operations that totaled 100 grand. Luckily, she's now on "socialist" Medicare, or she would have been instantly 20 thousand dollars in debt paying deductables.
It's time for this for-profit-insurance-driven insanity to stop.
I am not saying those other countries are bad but SICKO left out a hell of a lot of detalis.
All those plans that SICKO showed you are in debt up to their eyeballs. As fast as they can they are adding higher co-pays, co-insurance, cutting back on services etc.
I did a study of most all world plans and got depressed. On the surface they all work but once you start looking it seems nothing works as it did at first glance.
Take Japan, a model many in Obama's admin like. You will find that doctors see too many patients. This dilutes the services provided. In outpatient care, a clinic physician sees an average of forty-nine patients per day; 13 percent see more than a hundred. While patients have ready access to care, consultation times are short, and patients end up paying repeat visits to the clinics.
Did you know in France you pay first and then get paid back by your insurance company?
If you are subscribed to the French social security, you need to send a completed form (feuille de soins) to your CPAM (Caisse Primaire d'Assurance Maladie). Reimbursement takes usually 2-3 weeks.
85% of French also pay for supplement insurance to cover what the other plans don't cover.
There is no preexisting stuff in the other plans, Germany could place a Tariff on your private plan.
I'm curious what your plan is to keep the state from sliding into bankruptcy. I'm sure you saw the story in the LA Times this morning detailing how the state will be out of money by July. Not to diminish the importance of increased access to health care, but with all due respect, the problems California faces go far, far beyond that policy question.
How, given the constraints inherent in the California state constitution, will you as Governor affect the structural changes that will have to occur for California to continue as a viable entity?
My sense is that questions like this are beyond your rather limited capabilities.
You always seem to omit the spiraling cost this is adding to every San Franciscan's cost of living, like the 4% universal health-care surcharge that is showing up on practically restaurant tab. Or how about the $35 per month surcharge we now have to pay our pre-school (where the teachers already receive outstanding health benefits). The costs of this plan on mid-size businesses are just crushing, especially in this economy, and no one will be surprised as more of them pass these costs onto consumers.
Healthy San Francisco will probably cost my family $500 - $700 (after tax, of course!) just in 2009 and we get absolutely nothing in return.
They are lining up to replace you in San Francisco.
Our costs to pay for the uninsured is a fair question, and I don't know the answer to it. But I do know that I get to pay thousands more through our business and probably $600 more per year through cost of living increases. Tell me where I'm seeing the reduction on the other side of the ledger.
Oh yeah, and don't have a heart attack across the bridge in Oakland...Healthy San Francisco doesn't cover you outside of the City.