these same employers are legally able to reclaim the ma jart amount of funds intended for employee health care, thus, increasing their profits even more. the jury feels that the blatant capture of funds is at the expense of employees who are not receiving money earmarked for health care, nor are the customer who is are paying the surcharge for what they honestly believe is for employee health care. in reviewing the armorial intent of the health care program, we reminded ourselves repeatedly that this program is about providing health care for employees, not creating additional profits for businessess, the jury has no issue with restaurant eurs raising their surcharge, a significant number of restaurant owners

of the 66 million dollars that were set aside for health care under reimbursement, under hrh, only 11 of 66 million was actually reimbursed to employees for medical expenses, that means that only 17% of the amount that was supposed to go to health care actually went to health care which is in star contract to what happens under healthy san francisco where the city's reimbursement rate is 60%. the report also shows that over half of employers using hra's actually placed some restrictions on the use of those accounts. when we first introduced the legislation, one of the things we heard from folks who were oppose today legislation was the problem is not so much, you know, the accounts themselves but simply the fact that people don't know that they exist, and we recognize that that was an issue, but we always said that that's not the only issue, that it wasn't just that workers didn't know but even workers who knew they had access to these accounts, even if they had the knowledge, they could not exercise their rights because restrictions were placed on how the money could be used, and these are some of the restrictions that were identifie

collections and expenditures for employee health benefits in 2011, effective 2012 in january as per an amendment to the schonf the amount of surcharges collected for employee health care exceeds the amount spent on employee health care tha, employer must irrevocably pay and designate that amount equal to that amount. finding number 6, partially disagree, the board of supervisors defers to the response of olse, and it is as follows, the ordinance regulates surcharges imposed on customers to cover in whole or in part the cost of the health care, it is difficult in some circumstances which of any portion of a surcharge is imposed for customers for this specific purpose, however, the olse will ensure that employers understand this provision of the ordinance for and are in compliance of it and for members of the public, we have many, many findings, departments gave us their recommendation and is we are incorporating the recommendations we see make sense. with regards to finding number 7, i would agree with that statement and incorporate the city attorney's spops to finding number 7 which states that a business commits consumer fraud if it assesses a surcharge for a stated

what does it mean to designate funds that were intended for the health care of employees? designate, was that identify? well, what happens to it? what is the resolution -- how does the city respond if these monies are not paid for health care and what do you mean by the benefit of employees, there's terms in there that discuss, well, it has to go to the benefit of employees, it doesn't say medical benefit of employees which is one of the points we brought up, so those were the things we felt were -- there's also another issue and that is there are part time workers that work for more than one employer and this also is a confusing and complicated issue that could be resolved, this is what we mean by eliminating the hra's and requiring the money to be deposited directly with the city under the sf option which we feel would be a better way of providing these services and delivering these services to employees in the city. i don't know to what extent that -- >> thank you, president chu. >> i have one comment, first of all, i want to echo what supervisor compos said, i want to t

is we have a more significant issue on the horizon, the unfunded cost of paying for health care for our current employees once they retire. the last time the city assessed our retirement health care obligation was in 2010 and the estimated unfunded liability was $4.36 billion. we have taken a number of important steps since then to begin to address our structural budget issues in 2008 the city passed proposition b, a charter amendment that lengthed the amount of time an employee must work for the city in order to receive city-sponsored retiree health care benefits. and requires that both the city and employees gradually begin to contribute to the funding of the cost of the retiree health care. as a result, approximately 7,000 employees are making contributions to fund their retiree health care costs, and retiree health care trust fund, which was an initiative by proposition b now has $20.5 million set aside for these costs. in 2010 we worked together with labor and the business community to pass proposition c, a measure that required city employees to begin to pay their share of pension costs. this effor

. >>> elsewhere, big changes to walmart's employee health care plan. starting next year the megachain will offer u.s. employees and their families free heart, spine, and transplant surgeries at six major health centers including the mayo and cleveland clinics. the reason, walmart believes paying more to get the job done right the first time saves on costly complications. >>> it's going to cost another penny to mail a letter next year. the cash strapped u.s. postal service will raise rates on january 27th to help offset a record $15 billion in losses this year. that means if you stocked up on those forever stamps back in 2007 when they debuted for 41 cents, you're now saving a nickel a piece. not bad. >>> finally, do you get a warm, fuzzy feeling when you see that thumbs up sign next to your facebook post. come on, we all do, right? well, some creative students at m.i.t. have taken that a step further designing a vest that inflates to give you a hug when someone likes your facebook status. so sweet. >>> coming up, the a's are sent packing, a late field

or low-cost health care to residents who can't afford private health insurance and do not qualify for coverage from the state or federal government? do you agree with funding this for employees who spend less for their employees health care than what the city believes is adequate? >> yes. i think it's important that we continue in this direction. i was one of those persons who grew up -- i mean my grandmother raised me and my brothers and she worked as a maid and couldn't afford health care. and luckily we had medicare and we were able to go to the doctor and the dentist. i still have my same dentist who has been my dentist since i actually had teeth. i just think it's great that kids and people who don't have access to health care have access to health care. we need to look at ways to move into that direction and i think san francisco has definitely led the way for our president to move forward with obamacare and i'm excited about that and i think we can find more innovative ways to fund this. part of that is taking the fees from the employers who have those fees who aren't using it for reimbursement and other costs that we take those fees and use them for appropriate purpo

or low-cost health care to residents who can't afford private health insurance and do not qualify for coverage from the state or federal government? do you agree with funding this for employees who spend less for their employees health care than what the city believes is adequate? >> yes. i think it's important that we continue in this direction. i was one of those persons who grew up -- i mean my grandmother raised me and my brothers and she worked as a maid and couldn't afford health care. and luckily

reimbursement rates, he also decked olse to employ on which employers allow employees to draw down hra funds to cover health care. he asked our department specifically olse the office of small business and dph to conduct employee outreach around their rights and obligations under the health care security ordinance. and he called for a qualitative research effort to better understand employee barriers, real or perceived to accessing hra funds sparkly, that's something that we are working on doing that, i'm work -- working with many of the departments, privacy may be one that we would look at, but looking at it, i think ideally within those employers that are doing a real ri good job of drawing down and doing those reimbursements, what are the best practices and also looking at likely would be within the pool of employers that olse has investigated, what are the barrierser because olse will be doing direct files of those employees regardless, so we'll have more findings in the coming months and i will share that with the board. >> he wanted to get a sense of and members of the board wanted to work from the foundat

health care. you have 100 employees and you have noticed about your health care. >> we are headquartered in new york with 100 employees and our health care rates are going up 19% next year. so the other shoe has dropped. historically, they have gone up 5 or 6%. this is a blow to us. it is forcing myself and the board, as well as every other board and company in the country to re-evaluate whether or not we will continue to provide health care. the social contract has changed now that the government is involved. some math, our average cost for employee last year was roughly $10,000 and that's going up to roughly $12,000. so the economics are straight forward. if we move to everybody off the company plan and moved to the exchanges, we would save $1 million a year, extrapolate that to a thousand employees -- >> greta: but the problem with it is that, even if you would like to keep them publicly owned company, even if you would like to keep them and on and pay that, if you are publicly honed, you have a fiduciary duty not to squander the mon i, that's a problem. >> have you one or two rough quarter, adve

over half of employees, employers to 0 to 19 employees are not required to submit data to our office. in total, there was 1.2 billion dollars in health care spending on behalf of 220 thousand san francisco employees. we break that down into three general categories and these numbers were similar in percentages to what we've seen in prior years, 89% of the money goes to health insurance, 4% to have money to the city option, sort of also referred to as the healthy san francisco program x and 7% of the money went to reimbursement programs as a general category, the vast majority of that specifically to health reimbursement accounts or hra's, i think that# indicates and shows that the vast majority of employers who provide health insurance to their workers provides the vast majority to have spending are complying with the spirit and intent of the ordinance. looking just specifically at reimbursement programs as a general category, we did see the reimbursement rate increase sleekly from 2010 to 2011, that number went from 20% to 26%, and we found slightly more employers were utilizing reimbursement programs, that was a point that's been mentio

they had benefits, health care. 85% of the people who workd for companies of over 100 employees had health care, had retirement. payments, a monthly check until you died on top of your social security. could afford to buy a home, pay off that mortgage over 30 years and hope that your kids would do better. that's a big chunk for an awful lot of people. it made america the envy of the world and let richard nixon go to moscow and tell the soviet leader we have a classless society. >> suarez: that is also... the people living that dream are also numerically the largest part of the united states. how did they become so politically weak? >> well, they were very strong back then. as you know, ray, the environmental movement was strong, put pressure on washington. the labor movement was strong, put pressure on general motors and general electric and the u.s. steel and so forth. the civil rights movement put pressure on washington to open up the american dream to blacks and other minorities. part of what happened to them was it was so successful. but part of what happened to them was there was a po

doesn't, i do look forward to further conversations in what we can do to ensure that employees have the health care they deserve. >> okay, thank you. then perhaps we could entertain a motion to file items 1 and 2 and to forward item 3 to the full board with a positive recommendation? >> i'll make that motion. er >> we can take that without objection. >> item number 4. >> item number 4 is a motion revising the priorities of the budget and analyst 2012 audit skej july. -- schedule. >> and i would like to recommend that we -- subject to public comment continue this to the next goa meeting, i think that would be appropriate because two out of the three regular members of the meeting are not here. is october 9th the next meeting? >> october 2 -- 11. >> okay, i entertain a motion to continue this to october 11? >> we have to take public comment. >> is there any public comment on item 4 at all? great, public comment is closed. >> moved to continue this item to the 11th of october. >> we can take that without objection as to item number 4. okay, item number 5. >> item number 35 is authorizing the fire depa