-- [inaudible]. there are 10 hospitals in the northern side of san francisco, but only two hospitals in the southern side. there are more people living in southern san francisco. also, another unfortunate thing is that the area where i live in lacks clinics, let alone with chinese language support. in short, to spend more time and money for something that is on the priority list, this will all change after health care services must apply. [inaudible] thank you forgiving me time to share my opinion. i ask you to support the master plan. president chiu: thank you. jimmy. michelle. >> good afternoon.

my name is jimmy. i'm a youth leader at the chinese progressive association. i help lead the youth program youth movement of justice organizing. youth mojo focuses on issues in health care and education that affects low income and immigrant communities. i'm in support of the health care services master plan because i believe that san francisco needs to consider the future of health care in the city as a whole. it simply makes sense that san francisco develop equitable, quality health care citywide. the health care services master plan will identify gaps in services and medical cluffer underserved areas and provide recommendations on how health care in these areas can be developed. this helps improve access to health care services for san franciscans citywide and in turn improves the quality of health care in san francisco. working over the summer on a campaign to help save the hospital, i learned that services are j disproportion in

different parts of the city, particularly in the southeastern part of san francisco. most notable is the fact that there are 10 hospitals in the northern part of san francisco, whereas there are only two hospitals in the southeast. these two hospitals are st. luke's hospital and s.f. general which both receive a plegget la of patients daily. this fact alone clearly demonstrates the need for a master plan. san francisco need to be thinking strategically to serve the needs of the people. so for the good of san francisco, we need to lift the veil and see that there are people out there in need. san francisco needs to be accountable to its residents. it's time that san francisco had a plan, a vision of a healthy san francisco that provides awful its residents and not just a select few. thank you. president chiu: thank you. natalie, lee, alex. emily.

>> [speaking foreign language] >> hello, everybody. my name is michelle. i'm a member of c.p.a., a volunteer, and a i'm a resident of chinatown. i support the health care services master plan because this is very close to the personal interests of immigrant residents in chinatown. i'll leave myself as a personal example. i have had health problems since last year and it's been getting worse and worse. my family doctor is at

northeast medical services, but in order to book an appointment i have to wait overan a month to get an appointment -- over a month to get an appointment. and then when i went to see my family doctor, in order for them to diagnose me, i had to see a specialist. to see a specialist i had to wait another two months to get an appointment. so my health has been worse and worse but i have to just rely on painkillers and other over-the-counter medications because i have to wait months to see a doctor.

another example is my younger brother. i don't know the name of the disease but he was very sick, he was throwing up and we needed to get him to an emergency room. we called 911. so we got to the general hospital because there was so many patients and not enough doctors, even though my brother was very sick, he was put in the hallway with no one to see him for hours. they wouldn't let the family into the emergency room to see him so we were waiting in the waiting room but after hours i wept in to find him and he was there covered in vomet. there was vomet everywhere. he had been throwing up all over himself and there had been no one to attend to him.

so i was so frantic and panicked for my brother, i was running around looking for anybody, any doctor who can help him and grabbing people and begging them to take care of him and they went and looked at him but there were so many people who were even in worse condition that after a few minutes they just left. from these two examples you can see, especially for low income and immigrant communities, we need comprehensive services, translation and other health care services for our community.

and the waiting lines are so bad that when i have an 8:00 appointment at general hospital i have to leave at 6:00 in the morning to get there and i'm not seen until 3:00 in the afternoon. we really need this master plan. thank you. >> hello. [speaking foreign language] >> hello. i'm a member of c.p.a. and i live at mission bay and i do community work in chinatown. so i'm here to strongly support the health care services master plan for several reasons. the first one, because of language barriers.

the second because health care services are not affordable. the third is because services are not adequate leading us to have very long wait times. and fourthly, because even in the end when we get seen by the doctor we can't get the services that we need. so i'll give you a personal example to show you why i believe in this. i was having terrible tooth ache for several days. it was really painful and when i really couldn't take it anymore, i finally went to try

the doctor but i went to the doctor, my personal doctor, and they said he couldn't -- they didn't have the technology they needed to take care of my tooth ache. so they said they had to have me seen at general hospital and that i had to wait six days to be seen. i'm already in so much pain, i had to wait six more days and then when i get there, i have to go through all this bureaucracy, all this paperwork and jump through all these hops -- hoops and then finally i get seen and they say i need x-rays.

so at the end, they finally got the x-ray, had to wait another day to get the x-ray, come back and they said, ok, now look at your insurance. my insurance said, well, your insurance only covers half so you have to pay half of the money. at this point my tooth had already been in pain so many case. by that point my tooth didn't hurt, my heart hurt. i waited this long, i've tried this hard to get seen by a doctor and now i can't afford to get this problem fixed. so, until now, they still haven't pulled the tooth and that's why we need to consider. i'm just one example. we need to have a comprehensive health care plan.

there are so many different communities with different needs. i'm just one example of the many needs that our communities have for health care and that's why we need to have a comprehensive health care services master plan that can meet the individual needs of each community. >> thank you very much president chiu: thank you. i have a few more names. lucy, john, alex, nato, linda. i know there are a number of people they have left. please go ahead. >> my name is natalie. i am with the chinese progressive association. i am here today in support of the health care services master plan. currently in san francisco there is no plan to evaluate where medical facilities or health services are and where they are needed the most. i currently live in the portola district of san francisco in

district nine. and the health services in there are limited, are lacking. my mom has been suffering back pains, severe back pains, for over the past year and in order for her to go see her health care provider she has to take the muni for over an hour to the richmond district. even then she also faces language difficulties because she only speaks chinese. so we need this for san francisco, to evaluate future health services and health medical services, so that it will go to the places that need it the most. so thank you. thank you very much -- president chiu: thank you very much. rob smith, ron black. jerry. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm the executive director for

the chinese progressive association. i just wanted to put a little bit of context to why we had so many people come out today. it's partially because of this legislation, but also because back in 2004, c.p.a. actually did a lot of work in the southeast, exploring what are the needs of the chinese community and we did survey across neighborhoods of bay view, and we found that health care ac is he -- access was top on the list and so this was an important issue for us because we have seen that a lot of our members down in southeast, they were complaining that they really had to travel very far just to get to see any culturally competent health care services because down in southeast there are limited hours and a lot of people run able to visit those hours -- are unable to visit those hours. this became a very big issue for us and that's why we've

been working on this. in 2006 we actually were one of the few groups that came out to push very hard for healthy san francisco, as a step to increase access. but now that we have thousands of people who are in healthy san francisco, there's still a lot of them that can't access the system because there haven't been new facilities or services created. so we feel like the health care access, this issue is very important and this is a piece of legislation that can actually create a comprehensive plan for us to get there. i think there are a lot of forces at play here and i just want to just reiterate a lot of the issues that folks have brought up here from our members and chinese community and i would say in your own communities, that health care is still a primary issue with the national reforms that are coming in san francisco. we need to be ready and prepared to be able to address the concerns that are coming and basically address how we're going to really have a way to have true health care access

for everyone. thank you. president chiu: thank you very much. next. >> linda chapman. i cannot tell you how happy i was to see this supervisor campos and co-sponsors. we've been responding from neighbors and i myself regarding the e.i.r. on the campuses to be located near us. a huge, intense use. and speaking for lower neighborhoods, we've been talking with the hospital. perhaps there will be a win-win solution in the end but we do have real concerns about what they've proposed in terms of huge traffic impacts, for example, and other impacts on our neighborhood. since that's still a work in progress, i'm going to speak for myself and on behalf of the plan. some of you may be somewhat familiar with that. it was written maybe 25 years ago and what you see the development on van he is has been following it ever since.

it is an elegant plan for developing housing, for developing an attractive boulevard, an important boulevard, and for making sure that they don't exacerbate traffic impacts too much. now, what happens? the cathedral hill is in violation of almost every policy. anyway. those -- we have to be able to comply with the land use issues to a large extent. even if we're going to kind of leap off the cliff and say, ok, an institutional use will be there, where the city policy says, only housing will be, and mod ral commercial use, so it's not to create more traffic impact, another thing that i note living near there is the horrible congestion, the fact that one day last winter when it rained it took me two hours to catch the 49 at pine and get over to the mission where i was doing my tutoring at 22nd street.

now imagine people needing health care and the hospital says they want to locate there because it's so important, when people are -- [inaudible]. imagine trying to deal with that and get health care. president chiu: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> hello, supervisors. nato. i'd like to thank supe1 nato. i'd like to thank supervisor compose for your leadership on this and all of you for your -- campos and all of you for your leadership. the question is do we believe as a city that our health care system should be left to the trusting in the fate of all the private providers or do we believe that there's a role for public oversight and regulation and in the city of healthy san francisco, we believe as a city that there is. and the question is, what is it? this legislation is not -- is disappointing in that it's not as radical as some of the things that we pride ourselves on in san francisco, that make people on fox news upset.

this goes back to programs that we had in place 20 and 30 years ago with the west bay health systems agency, lots of communities all over the country are using the land use process in different forms, to promote access to health care. this is one version that works for our injuries dux. but it's consistent with a lot of that work that's happened all over the country.

>> if we look at our hospitals in san francisco, st. luke's is 100 year's old. children's hospital is 100 years old. when we do planning for health care, it's a really important kind of planning. and if there are facilities that are going to be providing service and determining service for the next 100 years, so it's important to have the best information we can to do this kind of planning. i don't think it's enough for people to simply take this under advice there. has to be some teeth in it. some regulatory compliance for the city of san francisco and for the developers on how health care is distributed.

right now i can walk to seven hospitals. personally in san francisco. but if i cross market, there's hospitals. personally in san francisco. but if i cross market, there's only two hospitals. san francisco general and st. luke's. which is going to be proposed to be significantly downsized. that's not an equitable distribution of health care. and a lot of our speakers are speaking about the shortage of health care in the southeastern neighborhoods. well the impact of creating a health care -- [inaudible] commue chiu thank you. next speaker, -- president chiu: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors. ron smith of the hospital council. first we want to applaud supervisor campos for the whole concept of a health service -- health care service master plan. what we would like to propose to the supervisor and i would love to meet with you tomorrow morning or as soon as you can, is that we follow the suggestions of the planning

commission and the health commission, that the health commission does the planning, the planning commission does the land use, that there is a required determination process which is in the current legislation, we're proposing that that continue. and of course the board of supervisors have final decision over both the planning and the health care. and supervisor, we would loove to meet with you at your earlier convenience to look at that plan. we think there's a legal way to do it. president chiu: i think that we have been -- our door has been open from the very beginning and we have made met a number of times -- we have met nam of times. if we haven't met it's because you haven't sought to meet. >> you're absolutery right. we didn't come up. we didn't realize how this could be done until very recently and it's our fault, not yours. president chiu: next speaker, please. >> good evening, supervisors.

rob black with the san francisco chamber of commerce. we do believe that there is a role in regards to planning or in regards to looking at a gap analysis of where we need to incentivize future growth for services until the health care community in san francisco -- in the health care community in san francisco. however, we have very strong reservations about doing that in a regimented planning structure. we believe, especially given that we have just seen in this year a dramatic piece of legislation that has come through the united states in reforming our health care system. to put something that sets in stone, even historically in stone types of medical procedures, ways of delivering services, that will be changed and that we will be stuck in a plan that is three years out that we need to wait to go back to. deliveries of services will change dramatically.

doctors will be probably going into pod there. will be a whole new structure about how medical services are provided, which this plan will be outdated before it even gets started. so we have concerns about that. if you look at that as a gap analysis we don't think that will be the same case. there are roles and we've heard some tonight. access, cultural access, those sorts of things are important. but based on geography, most likely health services will not be delivered primarily around geography, especially for specialty services. we've done a very good job of using clinics in san francisco and we should continue to do that and build that out. but for specialty services, that's probably not going to be the model. it also doesn't look as regional care. san francisco is an economic driver around the medical industry. we bring people -- people come here for medical services. it doesn't talk about that at all. we need to be dealing with those issues. so we would love that this get -- [inaudible] so we have more

time to discuss shoots with you. president chiu: thank you. next speaker, please. -- discuss the issues with you. president chiu: thank you. next speaker, please. we also have randy and abby. and any member of the public who would like to speak. >> good evening. jerry crowly. i'm as tired as you are, sitting here all afternoon. and -- however i'm representing the neighborhood network and refer you back to three years ago, i think you would remember when there was an appeal at the board of supervisors involved in an institution and some plans in the triangle area. the board of supervisors sent the institution back to develop an institutional master plan. which in

as i sat here this afternoon thinking about health care services, i thought, why have we waited this long. we have great respect for your leadership. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> i am here to say kaiser permanent stasupports planning r

health care. kaiser permanente is opposed to this as it was written. we believe it will limit access to health care, causing delays. san francisco is already one of the top cities to build a hospital, and it could limit the ability to continue providing services to residents, including those in healthy san francisco that we care for. the determination from planning department would place an undue weight on geography.

the ordinance could push health- care services and their quality of life out of the city. we attract patients from all over northern california, which brings a concentration of medical services to the city and the quality paying jobs to the city would not have if we have smaller political centers. >> you have done a great job at

hospitals. since you do understand the importance of what we are saying, have you figured out -- are there things we can do? this only makes sense -- we are about to be the real medical hub of the west coast. we are very proud of that. we have to plan, because without planning, there is chaos. you need to help us figure out,