i just want to state that. thank you for being here. supervisor campos: thank you again. next. >> also with the chinese progress of association and the progress of workers alliance. my organization, we work directly with hundreds of low- wage immigrant workers who suffer from low wages, poor working conditions, and therefore higher exposure for health risks. when we talk to our members about their needs, time and time again, it is jobs and health care at the top two issues that they face. we have seen examples in our community of workers who submitted it reimbursements for healthy san francisco -- for hra's and were refused without explanation. then there were worker's buying health care and switched over to hra because they could presumably get the money back at the end of the year, but they continue to be reduced reimbursements. there was bribery saying they would get kickbacks at the end of every month that you do not

use hra's. when workers are low wage, speaking about this issue, you know, coming forward with what is happening is extremely frightening, and they are very worried about retaliation. we have seen a very high level of fear of speaking out about what is happening. i feel like the first half an hour of this meeting really over complicated the issue. it is not that complicated an issue, ok. there is talk of this $50 million price tag. but that is exponentially said as the price tag on consumers and workers and the society as a whole. low-income workers do not have to pay that much because they get discounts was mentioned. someone is paying that bill, taxpayers, right? someone is paying that bill when people are not getting the health care that they need. thanks to each and everyone of you here today, we were able to unanimously passed an ordinance, and we're very happy and

appreciative of your support around that issue. but if you stand with us against wsip, you cannot turn your back on workers facing healthcare theft. to the same issue, this same problem. at a level playing field. if there is a minority of businesses, 13%, 87% are following their release and spending the money to buy health care insurance so workers can get access to the health care they need. i think the liberal has created an incentive that is upholding a certain part of our industries and our work force behind. if this loophole is closed, will incentivize employers to join the 87% better paying into healthy san francisco. people do not want hra's. no one says, give me an hra. they want health care. the one access to emergency rooms and all kinds of preventive health care. 30 seconds, some people have

said that is $50 million sitting around, and in these hard economic times we cannot have that money sitting in accounts unused. i think that is not true. i think what's this loophole is closed, this will go into our health care system. that is going to big -- to be good for workers, consumers, and our city. [applause] supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >> i am also with the chinese progress of the association of speaking on behalf of a worker was afraid to be here today because she is afraid of retaliation. she is a full-time worker and a mother. she said, when working people like me have medical emergencies -- [no audio] my employer has hra's, of

course, but they never told us about it. i have been held the come up recently at a serious medical condition, appendicitis, that requires surgery and a week of hospital stay. likely as qualify for charity care. otherwise i do not know what i would have done to pay the bills. the health care liberal has to be closed, and we support supervisor campos' amendment. the workers' money in the hra should not be drawn out at the end of the year. of course, i want to stay healthy and not have to use hra at all. but the workers funds should remain in the accounts in case they get sick. as a full-time worker, i would only be able to accumulate between $1,000 to $2,000 hra funds for year. that is enough -- not enough for a series medical emergency. these funds should be cumulate -- should accumulate year after

year [applause] ] supervisor campos: thank you. next bigger. >> good afternoon. my name is mike casey petraeus is speaking as president of local two and the san francisco labor council. first, i want to thank you for your initiative on closing this loophole, supervisor campos. during the darkest days of the bush administration, san francisco stood out as a beacon of light in terms of addressing real working families' needs. during that time, sick days for all working families in a san francisco was passed. we had worker retention ordinances passed. we had the right to organize legislation passed. we had living wage past. we had minimum-wage past, and this legislation initiated by a

the supervisor unprecedented anywhere in the country was passed. unfortunately over the past several years, we have seen a real erosion of working people's rights across this country, and likewise, an erosion of the responsibility of employers. responsibility that, in better times, was fully accepted, to provide for working families to be able to make ends meet. this groundbreaking concept of providing universal health care was one that created hope of real coverage of health care. this was, in many of our view, is here is compromised when that was hard fought for. we do not think it went far enough with the amount of money that was put in. however, we agree. but there is one fundamental understanding in those negotiations with both the employers and with the city

government at the time from labor's perspective. and that is that we were going to get everybody covered. we knew nothing about these health care reimbursement account is being loopholes. it was never imagined. there are three key reasons why this needs to be passed. one, to address the consumer fraud, which of quite adequately addressed and was highlighted in the "wall street journal." two, to level the playing field. 3, most important, provide real health care for working families. you already commented earlier about the cost of health care, supervisor campos. i just want to add a couple more things. a simple mri is average charged $8,000. that would be, for some of the working full-time, two years' work of health care reimbursement. we would have, in an average stay in the hospital in san francisco, over $19,000. supervisor campos' legislation

does the things we need to do. it addresses the frog, levels the playing field, and it restores the hope once and for of providing real health care for working families. thank you. [applause] supervisor campos: thank you for your comments. i do want to ask you a question. one of the things that i have found it disturbing is some of the things we have seen coming out of the chamber of commerce in terms of the impact of this effort on the other efforts. and i know that you and the labor community have really gone out of the way to try to work with the business community and have been, i am certainly disappointed by the way in which that has transpired. i am wondering if you have any thoughts about that? >> >> i do. we did sit down last week in an attempt to try to reach an agreement.

there were three major issues addressed. one was the 18 months after these -- after somebody leaves where we offered an amendment or rather a proposal to address that question, so that it wouldn't be forever and to infinity that, you know, after 18 months those accounts would be returned to employers if it didn't get used. the other two issues were the year limit, which we find just totally unacceptable to limit because of the extreme, you know, extraordinary costs of health care. the third question was one of whether or not accrual in the accounts versus real cash going into the accounts, which we were seeking to reconsider. that was the first time we had heard about that. we considered it but we were not -- we were not -- although we

initiated further talks about it, the business community saw no reason in pursuing that. the problem that i have with the business community right now, and i speak for myself, i won't speak for all of labor, although i think many in labor agree with me in this, is while we applaud the business community for stepping up and taking real leadership and assisting on the question of pension reform and rejecting jeff attachy and proposition d and committing to support proposition c as well as proposition a, which is the school bond, while we applaud them for doing that, in recent weeks there has been this terrible choice has been presented to us and it's been reported in the papers and we find it, quite frankly, i find it reprehensible that this false choice should be presented us, that if the labor community does

not back off of supporting this legislation, then there will be less support for the pension reform which we all agreed was the best proposition to move forward, which is proposition c. this is in our view, in my view and many of my sisters and brothers in the movement's view, terrible. we cannot be a city that forces working people to make false choices and where they are on this question. what we're being faced with here is we're pitting low wage, nonunion workers largely without the, you know, ability to have a health care insurance plan versus, you know, working in middle class workers who are fortunate to have a union and are fighting and struggling to hold on to their pensions. making these kinds of false choices is not the san francisco way. so we feel very strongly that,

you know, we're hoping the business community will retreat from that, fully support and endorse and do what's necessary to pass c while we continue to pursue justice and ott question of health care for working families. >> thank you. next speaker? >> thank you, supervisors. you have imagined to make me a labor sandwich today speaking between casey and paulson. but glad to be here. steve falk, president of the chamber of commerce. the chamber of commerce really is not the enemy here. you turn to what is considered the most progressive chamber of commerce in the country when you need help with pension reform, when you need help designing the 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