What Can Obamacare Learn From San Francisco?

San Francisco implemented healthcare reform years before Obamacare brought it to the entire country. Until this year, Healthy San Francisco provided care for 60,000 low-income residents via funding from the city, the federal government, patient co-payments, and fees paid by San Francisco businesses. About two-thirds of the patients covered by Healthy San Francisco are supposed to be covered by Obamacare, and the future of the program remains up for debate. But regardless of what’s next for Healthy San Francisco, its past has valuable lessons for the implementation of Obamacare in the city. How will Healthy San Francisco influence the way Obamacare is implemented in San Francisco–and what can it teach health providers about getting treatment and information to hard-to-reach constituencies, about cost control, and about providing healthcare for the previously uninsured? A panel including California HealthCare Foundation president Sandra Hernández and former Healthy San Francisco director Tangerine Brigham visits Zócalo to discuss the past, present, and future of health reform in San Francisco, and what it might mean for the rest of the country.