The Medical Freedom Channel

“Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to make San Francisco the first city in the nation to offer universal health care is, in reality, the dramatic expansion of a vision that existed long before he first ran for elective office. In 1994, at the urging of the state, the city created a health care management organization, akin to Kaiser Permanente, for residents served by the state insurance program that covers medical expenses for low-income Californians, known as Medi-Cal. The formation of the San Francisco Health Plan was intended to control costs by better managing the care provided to Medi-Cal beneficiaries. The health plan signed up its first member in 1997 and has been expanded three times since to pull in new groups of low-income residents and workers. The health plan now has 52,000 members, 32,000 of whom receive Medi-Cal coverage. What Newsom has proposed is, essentially, just one more expansion — but a radical one that throws open the health plan to the city’s estimated 82,000 uninsured adults, regardless of income, immigration status or pre-existing medical condition.” (07/02/06)