Ammiano’s Mandated Health Care Does Not Provide Universal Coverage for San Franciscans

Supervisor Tom Ammiano has proposed legislation that will make health insurance mandatory for all businesses with 20 employees or more. The ordinance will impose a government mandate for all San Francisco employers with 20 or more employees including part-time and seasonal workers to pay a fee to provide health coverage to their employees. This also includes non-profit employers. The following reasons are why this is not universal care for San Francisco :

Currently, 20,900 San Franciscans are unemployed. Under Ammiano’s plan, they would not be covered with health insurance.

More than 95,000 San Franciscans work outside San Francisco . Under Ammiano’s plan, they would not receive health coverage.

More than 120,000 workers in San Francisco work for employers with 19 employees or less. Under Ammiano’s plan, those workers would not be covered. This is 23 percent of the city’s workforce that would not receive coverage under this plan.

A total of 265,291 workers commute to San Francisco for work, including 250,680 workers from the surrounding Bay Area communities. If these workers are employed at a business or non-profit with 20 more employees, they would be covered under this ordinance.

As you can see, Ammiano’s ordinance does not provide universal coverage for San Franciscans. Ammiano’s proposed ordinance has now been assigned to the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee, chaired by Chris Daly. The Committee will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, February 1 and then vote whether or not to pass the ordinance to the full Board.