health care ordinance to begin with, when you need help with school bonds, when you need help with street bonds and even a sales tax increase. i can tell you there's not another chamber of commerce anywhere close to us that would be supporting all of these issues. i was on the stage with tom ammiano in labor when we introduced healthy san francisco. so i resent a little bit the implication that we're the enemy. we were part of the solution from the very start. we do have a loophole and supervisor campos, you said it very clearly, today this week, next week, are defining moments because you have to decide whether we need a sledgehammer to close the loophole and tie up tens of millions of dollars or can we sit down and find a mechanism to create a minimum balance, create the safety net

that has always been intended by healthy san francisco. a safety net. none of these solutions are going to pay for open heart surgery. that's just the reality. but we need a safety net to help people. if we can get every single employee into healthy san francisco, we probably wouldn't be meeting today. but we can't do that legally. but if we can create a base level of funding and have employers make that money available for employees to get into healthy san francisco, i think we solved the issue. let's focus on the problem. san francisco has lost 30,000 jobs between 2008 and 2010, and we've only put back 500 of those jobs, and this is according to the controller's office, not the chamber of commerce. so this is a defining moment. we have to decide whether you're going to alleviate the loss of

30,000 jobs and fix the problem the right way or are you going to exacerbate the unemployment problem in this city by just, you know, putting another mandate on business that truly is not necessary. we can hear a lot of rhetoric and you can get people all excited about this, but the reality is we don't need $50 million a year to fix the handful of employers who are using this loophole. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you, mr. falk. next speaker, please? let me read a few more names. rebecca king murrow, jonathan mead. >> supervisor campos, thank you. chair david chiu, supervisor farrell. good afternoon. i'm not going to get into some of the banter that we just had a couple minutes ago. i'm tim paulson, director of the labor council. we have 150 different labor unions in town and there are

multiple issues that we're very proud that we have been able to take up over the last few years as president casey has mentioned. i just want to say that it was very historic and as everybody knows the public option and the san francisco health care ordinance that we passed with the levin zero -- levin zero super majority of the board and mayor graven newsome's signing was a very historic day. this is not -- today is not -- even though we have been talking about it for months, today is not the first short period of time we talked about this particular legislation. this was a debate that happened five years ago. this was a debate that was concluded in this historic legislation is on the books. i think we have all been over the last few months very surprised at the moment of money that's been taken out of the health care available for basically service, nonunion service workers. i think we've all been shocked, everybody in this room. the fact that we are even

debating this $1.37 an hour or whatever else to not be taken into and staying in the accounts for workers is really a policy issue that we really shouldn't be talking about. most of us who do have collective bargaining agreement and do have health insurance are paying between $7 and $10 an hour. at the labor council, $1,500 a month is what we pay for employees to have health care they deserve. and do i really think putting any type of a cap on these accruals is not in the spirit of the legislation that we are -- that we are so proud of moving forward to. there are people, and you're hearing stories today, that are not getting health care. that are not even getting the few thousand dollars they can accumulate in a single year to move forward. when 80% of that money is not available to people for health care, there's something really wrong. i want to really urge people to move forward and get health care legislation that does accrue and

that is what the san francisco labor council supports. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you, mr. palsen. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is charlotte noss. i'm a staff attorney at the legal aid society employment law center. i'm here to speak in favor of supervisor campos's amendment. this is the largest legal organization in the western united states. we're dedicated to protecting rights of low wage and immigrant workers. we hold five weekly worker rights clinics, provide legal advice and referrals to over 2,3500 workers a year. in addition we have several telephone hot lines. for example, work and family hotline already so far in 2011 we have received over 1,000 calls. we see widespread abuse in low wage and immigrant-dominated industries, like rampant wage theft in industries we serve, the current loophole allows employers to steal employee benefits. we have heard stories from workers who are impacted by the loophole. workers who don't know they have

these benefits and incentive for employees to hide these benefits from the employees. we heard from workers prevented from using accounts and can't get the most basic and routine medical services. employers are incentivized to limit employee access to the funds. it's particularly pernicious among the low wage, often nonenglish speaking workers we serve. the employment law center officially endorsed the campos's amendment and to close the loophole because it's a straightforward and common sense approach to remove that powerful financial incentive to protect the rights of working poor and low wage immigrant workers we serve. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> hello, my name is gus feldman and and i'm here with sciu local 10 to 1 today. and we are here in strong support of supervisor campos's legislation because it gives workers a chance to receive routine medical procedures after working for several years. where as otherwise the status

quo, we would see these accounts as we have seen in the case of 13% of businesses funnel into the pockets of employers. so i would just like to reiterate some of figures so they can sink into people's minds. workers collect currently between $1,400 and $4,000 a year into these accounts. where san francisco general hospital, average cost of a childbirth that involves no complications is $16,000. and then average cost for treating pneumonia at san francisco general is $23,000. workers must be allowed to accumulate funds over time in order to pay for these basic medical procedures. i mean, campos -- i think we're all in a consensus here that there is a loophole and it's a problem that needs to be fixed. supervisor campos's legislation does that. it does so perfectly and it's not with a steel hammer or however it was previously described. it does so in a way that will

ensure workers have access to their h.r.a.'s and it does so in a fashion to help make health care more accessible throughout this city. there's really only one conceivable reason i could personally imagine why people would be in opposition to this, and it's because probably coming from that 13% of business owners or employers who feel that they are somehow entitled to pocket this money that is set aside specifically and from the initiation of this legislation which was set to initially pay for health care. that's just not right. it's a disgrace to see people supporting that mentality here. and we hope that's not the case. and we also hope that we do not spend any more taxpayer money on unnecessary research. this is a problem that's been well established, well documented and it's time to act now to fix it. thank you. >> thank you. let me just read a few more names.

collins, annie batten, jose rodriguez. next speaker, please. >> hello, my name is winnie gow. i'm the staff attorney at the asian law caucus. i'm here on behalf of the caucus and clients and community we represent to urge the community to support supervisor campos's bill to close the loophole in the health care ordinance. we have a free workers right clinic for workers where we counsel folks on a wide range of employment issues. through the clinic we provide direct representation to individual workers on administrative wage and hour claims and some benefit employment appeals. the vast majority workers that come to us live in san francisco. most are monolingual or have limited english proficiency. most work in the restaurant, hotel, construction, transportation or care giving industries. almost all of the workers we represent have no health insurance at all for themselves or their families.

they're struggling just to even get the wages that they should be paid for the work that they have performed and trying to make ends meet. health care generally falls by the wayside, both for themselves and for their children. for these workers, the promise of san francisco's health care security ordinance, when it was passed, it be a way to ensure they would get at least some measure of their sub tan tive -- substantive health care needs met. we believe in order to ensure the ordinance has a meaning in their lives the loophole be closed and campos amendment does that best. workers need to access and accumulate real amounts in these health reimbursement accounts so they can meaningfully offset the basic and serious health care events that can and often do derail their lives when they're not covered. employers shouldn't be allowed to take a backdoor around the purpose and intent of the legislation you already passed. they shouldn't be allowed another bite at the apple here. on behalf of the community and

clients we represent, we urge you to close the loophole and support the campos bill. >> thank you. and i would like to acknowledge our next speaker, who is a former member of the board of supervisors, former president of the board of supervisors, president aaron peskin. welcome back. thank you for being here. >> thank you, chair campos, president chiu, supervisor farrell. it's an honor to be before you. it is rare i get to come back to these chambers but i did have the honor of presiding as president of this body when the hcso was passed unanimously and even though there may be myth that's we were all on the same page, actually, we had a very politically, ideologically diverse body and all 11 of us voted for it and it was supported by the mayor. i think the only fight that we had was who's going to get the credit for it and who got the credit for it. but the good news is that san francisco got the credit for it

and i think we are all very, very proud years after it's passage and implementation. i say that in the context of the federal situation where right now obama care is under attack by the republican party as we speak. and if there is any right time to strengthen the loopholes in our system here, let us continue to be the leader that san francisco is and close those loopholes. supervisor campos, i commend you for the legislation that you have introduced. you have identified, as has the mayor's office, as has the business community, as has the labor community, an unanticipated loophole, had the board that i served on understood that over one out of ten businesses were going to exploit this loophole, we would have closed it. we did not anticipate that.

and you have identified a solution. when we're first considering hcso, i have to tell you there were full-page newspaper ads that said the sky was going to fall and this was going to lose thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of jobs. that is not true. we all know that is not true. the jobs that have been lost in san francisco were a result of the 2008 downturn in the economy and not of hcso and i believe that has been documented. please, i besiege you, fulfill the promise and intent of the original legislation and do not delay. when you have identified an injustice and you have identified a right solution, please move forward with due haste. anything less is an injustice. thank you for your time. [applause] >> thank you, president peskin. next speaker, please. >> hello, my name is brook

dimmerly. i work for sciu ten to one. i represent health care workers here in the city and county of san francisco. i will keep my comments really short because some people have already made some of the remarks i was going to make and they have done it in a very eloquent way. i just want to say thank you very much to supervisor campos for introducing this legislation. and thank you also to supervisors cohen, mar, avalos, kim and mirkarimi for co-sponsoring it. and i just wanted to give you one -- i was originally going to speak about the consumer aspect but supervisor campos already did that quite eloquently. so i would like to just give one short example from my own life, that gives an example of why the time period is important. when i first came back to the bay area, my much beloved bay area from hawaii, i was on cobra

for a while and i had an incident with the dog where i tried to break up a dog fight and it is up at the emergency room. for three hours in the emergency room because that was not a negotiated health care plan, it was $7,500 is what i would have paid if i hadn't paid my own cobra. so that sort of gives you an example, that's like two years or maybe less for some of the workers who are not working full time in the restaurant or other low-wage industries. so thank you very much for bringing this legislation forward. >> thank you. let me read a few more names. chris wright, alex hudson, steve lombardi. next speaker, thank you. miss ford. >> supervisors, i'm standing here on behalf of john mead who you called, retired paramedic had to go.

my name is connie ford and i'm one of the vice presidents of the labor council and head of the union that represents low-wage workers, many of them in the nonprofits local three. i am going to be really brief too. a lot of my come pate treettes said exactly how i feel. i think it's important to know that this health care and health access is a san francisco value. we established this four or five years ago just like brother casey said when we established the paid sick leave, living wage ordinance and many other things. workers today are under attack whether you're low wage, middle wage or high-waged workers and it's not time now for san francisco to go backwards and continue this kind of attack that's happening throughout the whole country. this is a value, this access to health care and the whole idea of it, $4,000 a year is too much for a business to pay for their health care, is not real. it's just not real. and it needs to continue. as we said, the money needs to

accrue is a key element. the money needs to accrue so that workers when they actually get sick can use it. many of these workers that we're talking about are said to be young and invulnerable. that's true but they break their arm. they have appendicitises, they have all sorts of different unforeseen expenses that pop up randomly. we need money in those accounts so they can use it. please, let us continue san francisco to build our san francisco with the values that we all honor and pass supervisor campos's legislation. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is rebecca king murrow. i'm a registered health and public health nurse. i'm here on my own time. when i'm not here i work at san francisco general and la gunedia honda hospital and i'm part of that safety net where patients end up.

i'm going to look at the safety net from a different perspective. the safety net is more expensive than the preventive care. 36 years as a nurse, so i have worked on almost every unit there is. i haven't done burns and i haven't done psych. but every other unit i have been there and i have done it hands on. when a patient ends up in the emergency room, they're costs are so much greater which really sort of government and your excel spread sheets. but the costs are greater because they're subject to a bad outcome. because they waited for something that could have been prevented and now it's an emergency. and the reason i take my time to testify about the importance of this is because this is a patient that touched my heart. in 36 years, either you have a lot of patients, they come and go in your life. but i will never forget day after day after day the 24-year-old in the i.c.u. who had dental abscesses and ended up with a take off the mee on a

ventilator. that woman will stick with me for the rest of my life. someone's sister, someone's mother, someone's daughter. lastly, i'm a district five member. i pay that fee and pay the fee in pride and i expect it to go there. don't leave a loophole over to invite fraud into the future. thank you very much. i support your bill. >> thank you. let me read a few more names. paul gepner and dave prince. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is eileen botanna and i'm with the neighborhood center. we work closely with the health and public safety issues and immigrant rights and affordable housing and we are here to support soup irvisor campos's legislation. i wanted say this legislation makes it possible for employees to purchase their own health insurance plan because most of the time most employers exclude health insurance premiums and

that, you know, they try to save the money at the end of the year so they can get that as well. employees deserve all of that they need to get. i'm also standing here in front of you because the workers that we work with closely couldn't be here. my mother couldn't be here and they're actually in sfraunts, they work in sfraunts. if you think about it, san francisco is a destination city. if you think about it all of the money they get but the workers are the back bone but yet they're not being taken care of. so i want to make sure that they're taken care of and we pass this legislation. i get that the numbers and statistics are important to this matter but the workers and my mother and my kids are more than just numbers, they are human beings. they deserve all of the things they need to get, the utmost health care and so i hope this passes. thank you so much for your time. >> thank you very much. i'm going to read a few more names. michael perialt. next speaker, hello.

>> hi, supervisor campos. supervisor farrell. i know -- you know i oppose the measure and i oppose the measure due to the fact it increases the cost of private home care for seniors, disabled and terminally ill who all have to pay for this themselves. most of these clients are middle class and we do a lot of really creative things in order to keep them in their home versus alternatives. i also have given my h.r.a. to hillary so she can look at it showing, hey, look there's no restrictions. we also give quarterly notices and i've also been really thankful at the end of the year the money that was not used, i was abe to get back. i run a very small office now due to the high cost of delivering home care and high cost of labor. our shifting we made -- we also made available to every single person who works in san francisco $235 to say please,

use this money and buy your own health care. they choose not to. this was the case before healthy san francisco was passed. we made emergencies available to them and we said, please choose your own health care. i admire what you're doing with this saying it's a loophole but it's -- i don't see it as a loophole and i don't see it leveling the playing field because it does not provide health insurance to people. i see it as another entitlement program that people come to expect. they don't contribute to it and then that just becomes another huge expense. and this case for me looking at what's happened with our company, i can't even have companies that compete with me. i'm in daly city. i play by all of the rules. so i used to have 80 people working and taking care of seniors and disabled internally and ill in san francisco. i only have 30 now. i have 50 people working in

other counties. so the 30, shifting those dollars that are not -- people choose not to use coming back to me he means i have to lay two people off in a five-person office. that's a reality. that's a real -- it's a big -- i don't see the playing field as equal. there's two different prices, one for 20 -- people under 20 employees don't pay into it. people who have more than 100 employees pay almost twice. and i don't see that the key subjective you want it to achieve. you can't give health insurance to people if they choose not to contribute to that benefit themselves. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. thank you, supervisor campos, chiu and farrell. i'm here with bernal heights community center. we are here to support

supervisor campos's legislation. i want to say something today about some people that haven't been mentioned as a lot of them are the people who work in the restaurant are immigrants, immigrants that work from, i'm not kidding 14 to 16 hours a day. most of these people are not informed about these benefits. the employers ignore them and so for the most part, they just don't want to tell them. i have been on both sides of the coin, where i have seen i know that the employers in some of the restaurants well known here in san francisco, they just want to ignore them. they just won't inform them because they want to grab that money. and on the other side, i have seen employers, these immigrants working hard and proud. they see and they want to be there and they want to ask about those benefits and they're afraid because the realation -- retaliation from their employer. i want to say please support

this legislation by supervisor campos. and let's not forget about the people who are really working out there for them. thank you. >> thank you, sir. next speaker. >> good afternoon. supervisor campos, president chiu and supervisor farrell. i am speaking -- i was the organizer of local 21 and also president of the apollo, asian-pacific american labor alliance in san francisco. i want to make a comment regarding the mayor's office representative today. i was a little bit concerned about his presentation. he spent about almost 45 minutes, he has lacked the understanding about the reality of low-wage workers. i support supervisor campos's legislation to remove the

loophole from the health care security ordinance because this legislation will make it possible for employees to purchase their own individual health insurance. many workers if they'remany wore opportunity to buy insurance, will use the reimbursement to help cover. now, the employer, they are not -- they are hoping to recover the money at the end of the year and exclude health insurance premiums, like dental, vision, like that, from services eligible for and reimbursement. i would like the three of you to support this legislation because it is good for san francisco. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you, sir. i have a couple more names. rose and aaron.

next speaker. >> good afternoon. hunters point community member. employees of the organization, they give every day, eight hours or more. my mother gave 40 years to her organization. one day, she got a brain aneurysm and a stroke. you know what the hospital did? they gave my father built for $1,800 and said, either pay it for you have to leave. 40 years and they don't value employees. they have a right to health care. they have a right to help. if people -- it is people's lives. they deserve that. it is important. the taxi driver cannot afford to get glasses, he cannot drive. he cannot pay his mortgage, his rent. he cannot send his children to score pierre -- to school. these are people's lives. we are representing people. this is very important to their

day-to-day activities. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you very much for sharing of your personal story. to all of the individuals, all the workers who have shared their painful stories, thank you. >> my name is chris. i'm the executive director of the committee on jobs. we represent many of the largest employers. some of these do use hra's as a component of health care they provide. let me say we do support the hc so and healthy san francisco. we think it is a good program. there are many problems, which a been identified. we are committed to being part of the solution to those problems and finding a solution. but as we work to improve, we need to be careful of unintended consequences, consequences that could be bad for the economy, for employers, and for employees. there are currently at least two

sets of proposals out there, one of which i am familiar with that we believe would mitigate the impact to the economy, and another one that we believe, the one before us today, that would have a very significant impact on the economy. at a $50 million cost to the economy, this would have the single largest impact of any measure coming forward. the $50 million that could be taken out of the economy, some of it will go into health care. much of it will remain out of the economy. it prevents businesses from hiring employees, from potentially keeping employees, given the current climate, and this would be bad for the city's economy. we believe that the current version