Health
Early in Newsom's first term, he worked to extend the city-funded health insurance program, started under Mayor Brown, to young adults, a program that had been previously offered only to children. Newsom's more ambitious plan on healthcare began to take shape in 2007. In his budget proposal for fiscal year 2007-2008, Newsom announced his intention to provide universal health care for all city residents, based on long-time City Supervisor Tom Ammiano's plan. The care will be provided through the San Francisco Health Access Plan.
Newsom's Health Access Plan, also known as Health San Francisco, shares the cost with workers and businesses using federal, state, and city funds and savings to provide healthcare insurance to all San Franciscans. The system plans to use more electronic referrals, focus on preventive care, and work to provide care to San Francisco's 82,000 uninsured adults. Newsom's proposal has prompted Oakland mayor Ron Dellums and San Mateo County's Board of Supervisors to look into possibilities for providing their own taxpayer-subsidized health care.
In February 2008, Newsom, also a restaurateur, signed a measure, backed by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, to ask San Francisco restaurants to voluntarily ban trans fats from their kitchens.
Read more about this topic: Mayoralty Of Gavin Newsom
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“Many women who used to be full-time mothers are discovering that outside work gives them friends, challenges, variety, money, independence; it makes them feel better about themselves, and therefore lets them be better parents.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“Most days I feel like an acrobat high above a crowd out of which my own parents, my in-laws, potential employers, phantoms of “other women who do it” and a thousand faceless eyes stare up.”
—Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)
“It is unconscionable that we ration health care by the ability to pay.... your heart breaks. Health care should be a given.”
—Kathryn Anastos (b. 1950)