By Phred Dvorak
Wall Street Journal

An innovative San Francisco health-care law is prompting some businesses to raise prices and curtail hiring. But it also is showing early signs of doing what it was intended to do: push employers to defray medical costs for more workers. San Francisco's law aims to provide affordable health care to the city's estimated 73,000 uninsured residents, roughly half of whom work. It requires businesses with 20 or more employees to spend a minimum amount toward their health care, either by providing insurance, reimbursing medical expenses or contributing to a municipal health-services program. The first payments by big companies to the city's program were due last week. Read more »

By Bob Egelko
San Francisco Chronicle

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed San Francisco on Thursday to continue requiring employers to pay part of the cost of providing health care to uninsured residents while a group of restaurant owners tries to overturn the program.

Justice Anthony Kennedy denied a request by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association to suspend the employer contributions while the case awaits an April 17 hearing before an appellate panel.

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By Cecilia Vega, Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writers
San Francisco Chronicle

Mayor Gavin Newsom was sworn in for a second term Tuesday, promising to make San Francisco a greener city and a national leader in health care reform while praising "San Francisco values" like support for same-sex marriage and protections for undocumented immigrants. Newsom's father, retired Judge William Newsom, administered the oath of office using a family Bible under City Hall's palatial dome in a ceremony that organizers billed as low-key. The mayor was sworn in alongside his sister Hillary Newsom Callan, her two young daughters and his new fiancee, Jennifer Siebel, to whom Newsom referred in his inaugural speech as "the love of my life."

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By The Milken Institute

In a groundbreaking study released by the Milken Institute, the annual economic impact on the U.S. economy of the most common chronic diseases is calculated to be more than $1 trillion, which could balloon to nearly $6 trillion by the middle of the century. Yet the news is not entirely grim because much of this cost is avoidable. "An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease" brings to light for the first time what is often overlooked in the discussion of the impact of chronic disease — the economic loss associated with preventable illness and the cost to the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and American businesses in lost growth.

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By Gavin Newsom
San Francisco Examiner

San Francisco is the first city in the United States with a universal health care program. Our 311 customer service system has already answered more than 800,000 calls — it is bringing better customer service to our residents and greater accountability to city government. Care Not Cash and other homeless programs have shown solid results, and new initiatives such as the Community Justice Center will help us continue making progress addressing homelessness and panhandling. We have accomplished a great deal. But there is more to be done. “Good enough” never is. Where something is working, I say, let’s make it better. Where something isn’t working, I say, let’s change it.

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This week, Mayor Newsom and our partners in the community began implementing San Francisco's universal health care program. This is acting locally. For many years now, American policy makers on every level of government have lamented, protested and proposed policy to solve this problem with nothing to show for it. Spend any time with Gavin Newsom and you will hear him say, "everyone complains about the problem, and blames someone else. We're going to do something about it." Read more »