Many California’s counties reported having more homeless residents this year, according to the 2019 Point in Time surveys, which aim to count the number of people experiencing homelessness on a given night.
San Francisco
For hospital administrator Roland Pickens, Healthy San Francisco offers more than universal health care and coverage for the city’s uninsured. The three-year-old city program also is inspiring new approaches to streamlining medical care. Pickens, chief operating officer of San Francisco General Hospital, said the city health care program has led to innovations that include evening and weekend clinics, better care of patients with chronic conditions, electronic referrals that speed up the appointment process and a teleconferencing system that has doubled the availability of interpreters.
The Nibbi Brothers construction company is a big supporter of San Francisco’s nearly universal health care program, even though it includes a mandate on employers to provide benefits to their workers. Bib Nibbi, the company’s president, says the law levels the playing field with companies that bid against him and win by slashing their labor costs. The city, he says, should avoid a “race to the bottom.”
Daniel Scherotter, a restaurant owner and chef, is leading the fight against Healthy San Francisco. It is not that he opposes the health care program. He simply thinks the city’s businesses, particularly restaurants, should not be required to finance universal health care.
A San Francisco clinic that serves the poor was flooded with new patients when the city created its Healthy San Francisco program. Now the doctor who runs the clinic is preaching prevention for those patients. Third in a series on universal health care in San Francisco.
The overhaul of America’s health care system may be stalled in Washington, but in San Francisco, a new method of delivering health care is already in place. Known as Healthy San Francisco, it is designed to care for the poor and under-served. It provides universal access to health care, comes with a public option, and has no exclusion for prior medical conditions.
The Community Arts Program in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District offers free art studio space and supplies — as well as a place to get off the streets and get creative — to more than 30 people per day, five days a week. It is run by Hospitality House, a non-profit that has served the homeless and low-income populations of the Tenderloin since 1967.