California appears to be successfully implementing the Affordable Care Act. Insurers are staying in the exchanges and prices are relatively stable.
Category: Healthy SF: Who Pays?
“Healthy San Francisco: Who Pays?” was a special four-page section in the Winter 2011 edition of the print newspaper. Three reporters, two photographers and a graphic designer contributed to the research, interviewing the director of the program, clinic directors, technology specialists, medical staff, independent experts and dozens of patients. They visited nearly a third of the medical clinics and hospitals in the Healthy San Francisco network and discovered some compelling trends.
Posted inCity Hall, Government & Politics, Health, Healthy SF: Who Pays?, Immigration
As Healthy S.F. Serves Mostly Spanish Speakers, City Vows to Shield Undocumented Clients
Ten years after it was launched, Healthy San Francisco today predominantly serves Spanish speakers and people living in the city’s southeast neighborhoods. Because some clients may be here illegally, city officials have vowed to shield them if the Trump administration launches a deportation campaign.
Posted inHealth, Healthy SF: Who Pays?, The Cost of Living Here
San Francisco to Expand Health Insurance Support
San Francisco is offering a new, subsidized plan and expanding Healthy San Francisco for city residents who need — but cannot afford — health insurance.
Posted inHealth, Healthy SF: Who Pays?
How ‘Healthy San Francisco’ Matters – and Doesn’t – in Obamacare
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.
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 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.
Posted inHealth, Healthy SF: Who Pays?
Healthy San Francisco: snapshot of universal care
It’s been almost five years since San Francisco launched its innovative, universal health plan — Healthy San Francisco — and last night a panel of public health experts and care providers gathered at the Tenderloin’s Glide Foundation to provide a snapshot of how the program is faring. The panel was co-sponsored by the San Francisco Public Press (which produced a team reporting project on Healthy San Francisco in the Winter print edition and online), Glide and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
Posted inHealth, Healthy SF: Who Pays?, Technology
Some employers drop private health plans for San Francisco’s subsidized public option
Unintended consequences of city’s effort at universal health care
A San Francisco requirement that businesses pay for their employees’ health needs has led to more workers having some form of health care. But after businesses initially stepped up to buy private health insurance for more of their workers, there has been a steady retreat. Since 2008, a growing percentage of employers have ditched private insurance for a cheaper way of meeting the law’s requirements: city-engineered reimbursement accounts, which cost companies half or less what they previously paid for traditional insurance.