Ignoring the $50 million annual impact and the subsequent loss of hundreds if not thousands of jobs, the Board of Supervisor's voted to support Supervisor Campos's amendment to the Health Care Security Ordinance (HCSO). If the measure is enacted as currently written, for all practical purposes Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs) will be eliminated as means of compliance for San Francisco's health care expenditure requirements.

The vote was 6 - 5 with Supervisors Campos, Cohen, Mar, Avalos, Mirkarimi, and Kim voting for the measure. Supervisors opposed to the measure where Supervisors David Chiu, Mark Farrell, Sean Elsbernd, Scott Weiner, and Carmen Chiu.

The Board will vote on the item again on October 18th and after that, it will be up to Mayor Ed Lee to sign or veto the legislation.

Mayor Lee also introduced his own piece of legislation designed to improve the HCSO on Tuesday and has stated publically that he does not support Supervisor Campos's amendments. Supervisor David Chiu has also introduced a common sense approach to addressing concerns about the current law while not unnecessarily impacting jobs in San Francisco.

While the Mayor has not publically said the word "veto" news reports indicate that he will likely veto Supervisor Campos's job killing legislation. In the coming weeks we will be asking you to contact Mayor Lee to encourage him to veto Supervisor Campos's measure and support a common sense alternative that improves health access while preserving jobs.

For more information contact Rob Black at (415) 781-5348 x 1, or rob@ggra.org.