Getting San Francisco Healthy

By Desmond Miller-Editor

San Francisco is the first city in the United States to do the unthinkable: it is creating a universal health care program geared toward giving everyone access to health care services. This program is called Healthy San Francisco and its goal is just that; to get San Francisco healthy.

In 2006, Mayor Gavin Newsom created the Universal Healthcare Council and charged it with the task of finding a way to provide health care for San Francisco’s 82,000 uninsured adults. The council came up with the idea that has evolved into Healthy San Francisco.

“We have some very smart, hardworking individuals, and there is no substitute for hard work” said Eileen Shields, public information officer for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “We started in July of last year very small at two clinics, both in Chinatown. We started small and quietly because we wanted to work out the kinks.”

According to its website “Healthy San Francisco is not health insurance. It will instead provide a primary medical home to participants, allowing a greater focus on preventive care, as well as a specialty care, urgent and emergency care, mental health care, substance abuse services, laboratory, inpatient hospitalization, radiology, and pharmaceuticals.”

“This is acceptable, affordable health care and a home for our participants. This concept of a home for care is new,” Shields said.

“People who have a doctor know where the doctor is and make an appointment to see that doctor. This new concept is instead of one doctor that you see only, you have a clinic full of doctors that you can see and this would be the place that you would receive your health care,” she said. “This clinic would also be where their records would be kept. It would also cut back on any duplications of care because we want out clients to have a continuity of care.”

As of June 2008, Healthy San Francisco has close to 22,000 participants and shows no signs of slowing down. There aren’t that many stipulations to participate either.

“You have to be between 18-65 years old and have to be at or below 300 percent of poverty level and you need to be a resident of San Francisco and people can come and go easily. So if they get a job that offers them health care they can leave and if they lose that job they can start up again in the program like they never left,” Shields said.