The Sacramento Bee reports that U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama have praised Mayor Gavin Newsom's Healthy San Francisco municipal bureaucracy as a model of U.S. health reform.
What part of "government failure" don't these folks understand? Healthy San Francisco is a tax-hike levied in accord with the gospel of the Church of Universal Coverage (as defined by Cato's Michael Cannon). It taxes small businesses (mostly restaurants) to fund the county's public-health bureaucracy, and declares that it is "covering" all San Franciscans.
I have written about it's tax-hiking ways before, and noted that it has failed to attract private hospitals and physicians to accept its "coverage." Healthy San Francisco claims that its members are enrolled in medical homes. I took a gander at its website, and saw that it has added a grand total of two private providers to its "network" of public-health centers and community clinics.
However, one private provider is the Sr. Mary Philippa Health Center, the charity wing of St. Mary's Medical Center (which is part of the mega-system Catholic Healthcare West). It's a fine center for poor people, no doubt, but I believe that non-profit hospitals affiliated with communities of faith have been doing this long before the Mayor of San Francisco got involved.
The second private provider is the Chinese Community Health Association, undoubtedly a similarly motivated organization.
Noticeably absent from "The Care Network" are any mainstream hospitals or physician practices.
High taxes and limited choice: Is this the future of U.S. health care?
Research and commentary from a former senior executive in the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
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