San Francisco: Taking a Bite Out of Health Care Costs

In a blog post in the Huffington Post, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom writes about the successes of the city’s expaned health care program:

But in San Francisco we are going far beyond the notion of health care as just a way of treating sickness. We are saving money, and ultimately improving lives, by focusing as much of our attention on how to keep people well as we do on how to treat their illness.

We are implementing cost-effective reforms that will lower the cost of health care, while raising the level of good health, through a series of common sense programs like easier access to fresh and nutritious foods, preventative health care counseling, immunizations and promoting basic exercise. Study after study reach the same conclusion: keeping people healthy saves billions and billions in health care costs. No city in America is doing more to address that simple truth by investing in wellness, from the foods we eat to the simple steps we can take like walking a little more each day.

You can read his entire post here.