Universal Healthcare--and the Sky Didn't Fall

When the City of San Francisco installed its plan for universal healthcare, it got the same crazed predictions of doom from opponents as we're hearing now. Two years later, it's working, and a new study says that the impact opponents warned of--job losses and businesses fleeing from the mandate to provide healthcare--didn't happen.

From today's SF Chronicle story:

"The sky has not fallen - the world as we know it did not come to an end," said [Mayor Gavin] Newsom, adding the controversial policy didn't prompt businesses to leave, bureaucracies to sprout up or the city's economy to crater.

Healthy San Francisco started in July 2007 to ensure the city's 60,000 uninsured residents had access to health care without regard for their pre-existing medical conditions, immigration status or employment status. It has now covered about 75 percent of the uninsured at a cost of roughly $120 million a year including city money, state grants, employer contributions and participants' fees."

This is all the more impressive because a city doesn't have the size and bargaining power of a state or of a nation.