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By Paul Elias
Associated Press
San Francisco can provide health care to the uninsured and have city businesses help pay for it while a lawsuit challenging the controversial program is decided, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
A lower court in December had struck down key provisions of the city program, a first of its kind in the nation, that would essentially add a business tax to pay for a plan that envisions covering about 80,000 people and costing $200 million.
The city estimates that as many as 20,000 uninsured workers are eligible.
But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday it appears that the city’s program will ultimately prevail.
“There may be better ways to provide health care than to require private employers to foot the bill,” Judge William Fletcher wrote for the unanimous three judge panel. But Fletcher said it wasn’t up to the court to “evaluate the wisdom” of the plan, only its legality.
Fletcher said the city and the labor unions who joined San Francisco in defending the lawsuit “have a probability, even a strong likelihood of success.”
A politically powerful restaurant organization sued the city immediately after Mayor Gavin Newsom signed the program into law in July 2006. The program requires companies with at least 20 workers to provide health coverage or pay the city a fee.
The program, dubbed Healthy San Francisco, was launched in July with initial eligibility limited to the city’s poorest residents. More than 6,500 people have signed up so far.
U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in December knocked out the business fee when he agreed with the restaurant owners and ruled that the program violated federal law.
A lawyer for the restaurant owners didn’t return a telephone call.
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