If you look to our new California Newsladder in the upper right corner, you'll see a headline "9th Circuit Upholds SF Universal Health Care Plan." That decisions was announced only a few hours ago, and I still haven't had time to take a look at the whole opinion, but you can see the order here(PDF). From the Chronicle:
The city of San Francisco won approval from a federal appeals court today to begin providing health coverage to all uninsured adult residents under a new ordinance and require employers to share the cost. A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the city's request to suspend a federal judge's Dec. 26 ruling striking down a key funding provision of the ordinance. That provision requires large and medium-size companies to offer insurance to their workers or pay a fee to the city.
The appeals court said the city was likely to prove that U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White was wrong when he ruled that local governments lack the power to force employers to contribute to a health care program. Today's decision allows the city to enforce the entire ordinance while it appeals White's decision.
Judge Fletcher, who wrote the order granting a stay of Judge White's ruling, agreed with SF's argument about the plan. Flip it. |
Put simply, restaurants or any other business are not required to have any specific plan, or any plan at all. They are merely exempted from a fee if they do have a health care plan. While I think ERISA shouldn't be applied at all in these cases, as ERISA was originally intended to benefit employees, not corporations, this ruling is consistent even with the broad counterintuitive reading that the Republican dominated judiciary is using these days:
White ruled that the provision violated a 1974 federal law that prohibits state and local governments from regulating employee benefit plans. But in today's ruling, the appeals court said San Francisco has not required any employer to adopt a health plan or provide specific benefits, as long as the company complies with the ordinance by paying a fee.
To comply, "employers need not have any (health) plan at all; and if they do have such a plan, they need not make any changes in it," Judge William Fletcher said in the 3-0 ruling.
Of course, the Supreme Court could eventually have something else to say about this, but in the meantime, the program goes forward, and people will enroll. Of course, this will affect the state health care plan as well, as the ruling's logic basically reads right onto the state plan passed by the Assembly.
One little point, I think this ruling doesn't save SB 840, single payer. If we did single payer, we would be saying to employers, cancel your current health care plans and join ours. So, I dunno on that. I'll read the decision. |
