Government shutdown temporarily aside, effective Jan. 1, 2014, most people need to carry health insurance or pay a fine. It’s called the “individual mandate.” If you’re signed up with Healthy San Francisco, there’s one very important thing you need to know: Healthy San Francisco is not health insurance. So, it’s not going to get you off the hook for that individual mandate.
Category: Health
Posted inCity Hall, Health, Healthy SF: Who Pays?
S.F. civil grand jury slams restaurant health care surcharges
San Francisco’s civil grand jury on Thursday chastised many of the city’s restaurants for profiting from surcharges they add to customers’ bills under the name of paying for health care and recommended that the city ban the practice.
Posted inArts & Culture, California, Health, Human Trafficking, Public Safety
Comic: Obedience is the best weapon
One woman’s true tale of human trafficking and rescue
Human trafficking is largely seen as a problem overseas, but its rise in the U.S. has gone largely underreported. For its Spring 2012 edition, the San Francisco Public Press published a special report on human trafficking in the Bay Area. The report examined the financial and political challenges facing agencies that aid trafficking victims and prosecute perpetrators. As a follow-up to this report, renowned cartoon artist Dan Archer illustrated one woman’s story with a full-page cartoon in the Summer 2012 edition.
Posted inHealth, News
Young poets launch social justice campaign against diabetes
Amid rising rates of diabetes in teenagers, youth are leading a new campaign to combat the social and environmental factors that created the epidemic. “This campaign is more about the social determinants of the disease,” said Sarah Fine, project director for the Youth Speaks UCSF Public Health Literacy Project. “We want to change the conversation to what are the social forces exacerbating the epidemic and what can we do to affect change.”
Posted inAging, Economy & Business, Health, Public Safety
Chinatown death triggers worries about isolated seniors
A tragedy happened in San Francisco’s Chinatown in mid-April. Yee-Shui Mar, 91, fell from a window in her apartment building. The Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily reported that Mar, who was from Taishan City in Guangdong province, lived alone. She had a married daughter and grandchildren living elsewhere.
Posted inCommunity, Health, Media, News
Tobacco brands zero in on black youth, study finds
Tobacco marketing is targeting California’s low-income and African American youth, according to researchers who examined advertising throughout the state. Academic researchers funded by the state’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program found that there was greater visibility of menthol cigarette advertising at retailers near high schools where there are larger African American student populations.
Posted inAging, Health
Bay Area program helps seniors, disabled live independently
“I don’t know how any senior can handle all of this stuff,” sighs Mary Anne Humphrey, 68, who suffers from limited mobility due to a spinal cord injury. Humphrey is explaining the endless paperwork, social services, doctor appointments, benefit plans and medications she juggles as a disabled senior. Fortunately, Humphrey is one of 1,200 San Francisco County residents who have received help over the past five years from a unique Bay Area program that keeps older adults and the disabled living independently: the Community Living Fund.
Posted inFood Systems, Health
State bill would legalize selling home-cooked food
The California Homemade Food Act, AB1616, may be a game-changer for entrepreneurs who want to cook in their kitchen and sell on the street. Vendors who make breads, nut mixes, fruit butters, preserves and other foods that don’t spoil at room temperature would be able to legally cook from home if the bill passes.
Posted inHealth, Healthy SF: Who Pays?, News
City’s health plan risks reverting to safety net for poor
Local, state officials must develop new models for care by 2014
This story appeared in the Spring 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.
San Francisco’s experiment in universal health care, which grew over the last five years to cover an estimated 85 percent of the city’s uninsured, may need to partly return to its origin as a network of safety net clinics and hospitals for the poor as national reforms syphon off middle-class patients. Healthy San Francisco provides medical services to more than 50,000 city residents. But the program could take a financial blow within the next two years as cities and counties adapt to national health reform.
Posted inCity Hall, Health, Healthy SF: Who Pays?
Some San Francisco firms using legal loophole to skimp on health care cost
A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.
It’s no wonder there is a hue and cry about an uneven playing field among businesses as they comply with San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance. The law requires most employers to provide health care benefits to workers who put in at least eight hours a week. But an analysis of compliance reports submitted by 15 randomly selected employers to the city’s Labor Standards Enforcement Office finds that they spent wildly different amounts on health benefits per employee in 2010, the most recent year reported.