S.F. health plan still breathing
By Brent Begin
Examiner Staff Writer 10/1/08
Dr. John Nienow gives patient Nate Goldberg, who is covered under the Healthy San Francisco plan, a check-up at Haight Ashbury Free Clinic on Tuesday. Cindy Chew/The Examiner SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco's restaurants, which have been waging a courtroom battle against a city law that requires employers to pay for employee health care, were struck a legal blow Tuesday by a federal circuit court - but vowed to keep fighting.
City leaders hailed the decision by a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals as a victory for San Francisco's landmark affordable health care program, which to date has enrolled approximately 30,000 people, according to Mayor Gavin Newsom.
"Today's ruling is a huge victory for this city and the 46 million Americans who don't have health insurance," said Newsom in a statement. "San Francisco is proving it can be done."
Authored by Supervisor Tom Ammiano and signed into law by Newsom in July 2006, the ordinance was quickly thrust into federal court three months later by San Francisco's Golden Gate Restaurant Association on the grounds that it preempted a federal law pertaining the employer benefits.
The panel unanimously ruled that San Francisco was not regulating benefits because businesses have the option whether to provide health care or to pay money to The City for health care for each worker.
"There may be better ways to provide health care than to require the employers in the City of San Francisco to foot the bill. But our task is a narrow one," the judges wrote in the conclusion of the 38-page ruling.
The Golden Gate Restaurant Association can now appeal to a full 11-judge panel or to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We're definitely going to appeal," said the association's executive director, Kevin Westlye. "The only question is in which court."
The restaurant group has already spent over $500,000 to fight the mandate and the costs are expected to break $1 million, Westlye said. "This is a battle that we have to fight or this ordinance will bankrupt many restaurants in San Francisco."
Westlye and other San Francisco business leaders say employers are bracing themselves for similar health care laws to crop up across the country -- a prospect that Ammiano took a more positive view of.
"This is a great triumph for the City, and if it can happen here it can happen anywhere," Ammiano said. "Businesses are going to see a reward in the end. People like to frequent restaurants when they know the employees are healthy."
The employer spending mandate provides about 20 percent of the funding for The City's $200 million Healthy San Francisco program for uninsured residents; the rest comes state and federal funding, as well as sliding scale payments from patients.
Businesses with 20 to 99 employees are required to spend $1.17 per hour per worker for health care - or give the sum to The City to provide that care. Businesses with more than 100 employees are required to spend $1.76 per worker per hour.
2 Comments
Reader Comments:
POSTED Oct 1, 2008
Dr. John Nienow: "The patient described is actually in need of a liver biopsy....the wait time for diagnostic procedures has shortened, but I know nothing about wait times for liver transplants."POSTED Oct 1, 2008
badassSFrepub: "Business are not going to see a reward Tom. They are going to see more idiots like you forcing them to spend money, and they are going to either have to raise prices or shut down."