SanFrancisco has a public health care plan that will surely come to play in the current health care debates and proposals. Here is a clip of the beginning of the Op-Ed piece in the NYTimes:

TWO burning questions are at the center of America’s health care
debate. First, should employers be required to pay for their employees’
health insurance? And second, should there be a “public option” that
competes with private insurance?

Answers might be found in
San Francisco, where ambitious health care legislation went into effect
early last year. San Francisco and Massachusetts now offer the only
near-universal health care programs in the United States.

The
early results are in. Today, almost all residents in the city have
affordable access to a comprehensive health care delivery system
through the Healthy San Francisco program. Covered services include the
use of a so-called “medical home” that coordinates care at approved
clinics and hospitals within San Francisco, with both public and
private facilities. Although not formally insurance, the program is
tantamount to a public option of comprehensive health insurance, with
the caveat that services are covered only in the city of San Francisco.
Enrollees with incomes under 300 percent of the federal poverty level
have heavily subsidized access, and those with higher incomes may buy
into the public program at rates substantially lower than what they
would pay for an individual policy in the private-insurance market.

To pay for this, San Francisco…