Stay for Health Plan Provision in San Francisco

City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office has stepped forward and filed a case in a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to ensure the application of the health care ordinance which will be taking effect on Jan 1st, 2008.

Healthy San Francisco plan proposes that the businesses with 20 or more people working for them will have to pay $1.17 per hour per worker. If the number of workers increases than 100, the amount will increase to $1.76 per hour.

Golden Gate Restaurant Association had filed a lawsuit challenging the new ordinance saying that the provision of employers paying for the health insurance would violate a 1974 federal law requiring consistency in the health coverage afforded employees who work for the same company but live in different jurisdictions.

The association also said that it puts a costly burden on members of the association which are already struggling to make a profit.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White had given the judgment in favor of the employers association. The court had declared that - "By mandating employee health benefit structures and administration, those requirements interfere with preserving employer autonomy over whether and how to provide employee health coverage, and ensuring uniform national regulation of such coverage,"

But the city attorney argued the judgment as he said that the ordinance gives businesses or the employers the choice of either funding an ERISA-regulated plan or making direct payments to the city and it is entirely up to the employer to decide how to comply with this spending requirement.

"Without this stay, tens of thousands of San Francisco residents and workers will be deprived of critically necessary health care services for uninsured people," he added.

In an estimate done last year, it was found that the number of uninsured people in the city was 82,000, but a recent state survey updated the current number to 73,000.

This health care plan is entirely a new concept in U.S. and San Francisco will be the first state to apply such an ordinance in U.S., if stay is granted.

Democratic Presidential candidates have proposed similar reforms on a national level as they feel that steps like this help improving the healthcare all over U.S. These include Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.