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Frustrated with the City's Safety Net
San Francisco's public heath program, Healthy San Francisco, services nearly 47,000 uninsured patients. Some of those patients are young, educated professionals, the subject of a three-part series we are reporting. In part two, KALW's Zoe Corneli speaks with one member of Healthy San Francisco who is frustrated with the program. Her experience mirrors that of a third of participants who reported to the independent Kaiser Family Foundation that at least one aspect of getting care is more difficult now than before they joined the program.
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Responses (3)
ProPublica just came out with this interesting report assessing the existing "public options" in health care. Healthy SF isn't among them, but the analysis is relevant to this discussion: http://www.propublica.org/ion/health-care-reform/item/grading-the-public-options-that-already-exist-1028
From what I've seen, Healthy San Francisco is a good introduction to community-based health care, but it does not (and perhaps cannot) solve our health system's major flaws. There will always be high demand for free or low-cost social services. Ideologically, Healthy San Francisco appears to work, but it might take a few years to make the system more efficient.
I asked Jen Piallat, the owner of Zazie Restaurant, to weigh in the conversation. This is what she had to say:
"I chose very early on to actually provide full health insurance for my staff rather than trusting the city to spend the money I sent them wisely. I've never found SF to be very efficient in spending the other taxes they collect... the "SF Payroll Tax" in particular seems to go completely to waste... so I thought that if I was going to spend roughly $100k/ year on this program I wanted to make sure my employees were actually insured. My staff has had great luck with Kaiser and I'm quite pleased with the care we've received thus far. I don't think "Healthy SF" would have given my staff any better care than they got before going to General Hospital uninsured."