Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/san-francisco-ramps-up-care-for-citys-uninsured Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript While the U.S. has struggled with an imperfect health care system, San Francisco has launched its own initiative to extend coverage to the more than 60,000 adult residents in the city without insurance. Spencer Michels reports. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. SPENCER MICHELS: Until recently, San Francisco, a diverse city with a population of nearly 800,000, had more than 60,000 adult residents with no health insurance. They were not poor enough for Medicaid, nor old enough for Medicare.While the nation struggled with reforming health care, this city began a program of its own that so far has enrolled more than three-quarters of its uninsured. It's called Healthy San Francisco, and it is not, strictly speaking, health insurance. Rather, it's a way to provide health care, but only within the city limits.The plan was not particularly radical. It used mostly existing resources, like city clinics and nonprofit hospitals, to supply and coordinate care. Instead of flitting from one clinic or emergency room to another, enrollees choose a medical home, one of 30 public or private health centers in the city, where they go for low- or no-cost health care. WOMAN: So, do you work? PHIL WOO, unemployed: No. WOMAN: No? How do you support yourself? PHIL WOO: I don't. I'm taking care of my mom. SPENCER MICHELS: Phil Woo is a printing press operator in Colorado with insurance who left his job and his insurance and moved to San Francisco to take care of his aging mother. PHIL WOO: At 59, I don't think you could find a job that quickly and to replace your health insurance. SPENCER MICHELS: Woo, who has high cholesterol and hypertension, came to the Chinatown Public Health Center for care. And its director, Dr. Albert Yu, steered him into Healthy San Francisco. DR. ALBERT YU, Chinatown Public Health Center: Now Phil knows this is his medical home. He actually cannot go to another health center to get care. SPENCER MICHELS: If he needs hospitalization, you manage it from here? DR. ALBERT YU: We coordinate the care with the specialist. We coordinate the care with the emergency room. SPENCER MICHELS: Healthy San Francisco was proposed in 2006 by Mayor Gavin Newsom and approved by the city supervisors. GAVIN NEWSOM: We're a public plan. We're that public option. And I don't think you noticed anything but the American flag on city hall when you came here. We didn't replace it with the Canadian flag. The sky didn't fall in. The world didn't come to an end.