A healthcare plan for the uninsured

On July 25, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved health care coverage for uninsured people living in this city.

The San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance is the result of combining two different proposals: one from the mayor, Gavin Newsom, and the other written by pro gressive, gay supervisor Tom Ammi ano. The latter plan was widely supported by or gani zed labor and grassroots organizations.

Scheduled to go into effect in 2007, the ordinance will require employers of 20 or more workers to provide healthcare coverage. Employers already providing some form of group insurance must show that they spend a minimum of one dollar per worker hour on healthcare.

Employers who do not offer insurance to their non-management workers will be required to pay between $1.06 and $1.60 per worker hour into the new Health Access Plan.

The new plan will emphasize preventive care and early treatment. It will allow workers to have a regular doctor of their choice and access to care at both public and private hospitals and clinics. It will not cover dental care and only some eye care and elective surgery.

The plan will include uninsured workers no matter what their income, immigration status or pre-existing medical condition. It will replace the current inefficient method of healthcare delivery via expensive emergency-room care, which is acces sed by workers who have nowhere else to go when they absolutely have to have medical care. The yearly city costs for emergency-room care are about $104 million.

The new plan will still be partly financed by the city, but with additional funds from business and the workers themselves.

The plan will not be free, but for people currently uninsured, estimated between 82,000 and 85,000 San Franciscans, the plan is a big step forward. That is because the presently uninsured are mostly workers at jobs that offer no healthcare benefits and pay too little for the workers to buy health insurance on their own.

These workers cannot access state Medi caid healthcare and other services currently available to the masses of unemployed and those barely surviving on public assistance.

Despite loud objections from business interests and threats of endless legal challenges, the plan passed. Speaking about this victory for the working class in San Francisco, Don Bechler of Healthcare for All said: “The importance of this legislation is that it covers a lot of people,” and “The business community has been defeated on this one by labor. This is very significant.”

This victory is one step forward in the struggle for universal healthcare for everyone, against the profit-motivated, lucrative big business of healthcare that includes the giant pharmaceutical companies, the equipment suppliers, the hospital corporations and private medical insurance providers. The city of San Fran cisco has set an example for the rest of the state of California and the entire United States.

Healthcare for people, not for profit!