{"id":473774,"date":"2026-09-24T03:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T03:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/473774\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T03:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T03:18:07","slug":"s-f-residents-are-losing-insurance-can-healthy-s-f-fill-the-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/473774\/","title":{"rendered":"S.F. residents are losing insurance. Can Healthy S.F. fill the gap?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enrollment in Healthy San Francisco<\/a>, the city\u2019s healthcare program of last resort for uninsured residents, has grown by 39 percent since this January, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That increase may be only the beginning, according to city officials and local healthcare providers. <\/p>\n

As new Medicaid work requirements and eligibility checks enacted under the Trump administration take effect next year, alongside separate state Medi-Cal restrictions, an estimated<\/a> 25,400 to 50,500 people in San Francisco are at risk of losing Medi-Cal coverage by the end of 2027.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Healthy San Francisco was created in 2007<\/a> to give uninsured residents access to primary and preventive care. The city launched the program at a time when an estimated 60,000 San Franciscans<\/a>, many of them working adults, lacked health insurance and often relied on the public health system for care.<\/p>\n

Today, the program is funded<\/a> primarily by San Francisco\u2019s General Fund, plus income-based fees paid by patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Early<\/a> evaluations<\/a> found that Healthy San Francisco improved access to care. At its peak, in the 2010-11 fiscal year, it enrolled more than 54,000 residents. Not all of them were low-income. Before the Affordable Care Act, health insurance for self-employed individuals \u2014\u00a0especially those with pre-existing conditions \u2014 could be prohibitively expensive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also had significant drawbacks. Unlike health insurance, Healthy San Francisco only worked within city limits. A patient who broke their leg in Oakland, for example, would have to travel back to San Francisco in order to have their treatment covered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enrollment fell below 3,000 by the end of 2025, as residents gained insurance through the Affordable Care Act and subsequent Medi-Cal expansions. Today, adults who live in San Francisco, are uninsured, have household incomes at or below 500 percent of the federal poverty level and are ineligible for public insurance, such as Medi-Cal or Medicare, may qualify<\/a> for Healthy San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Currently there are around 261,000 San Francisco residents<\/a> insured through Medi-Cal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a Sept. 14 City Hall hearing, Tangerine Brigham, chief operating officer of the San Francisco Health Network<\/a>, a system of public clinics and hospitals run by the city\u2019s Department of Public Health, attributed the sudden spike in enrollment to California\u2019s January freeze on new Medi-Cal enrollment for undocumented immigrants. <\/p>\n

So far, she added, enrollment had not yet strained the program\u2019s capacity. The city has approved more than $25 million in additional funding to help nonprofit clinics that see patients with Healthy San Francisco coverage, with the expectation that 5,000 to 7,000 new patients could enroll by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Some of those nonprofit clinics are already seeing a spike in patients who have lost coverage.\u00a0\u201cThe crisis is already here,\u201d said Anna Robert, CEO of Mission Neighborhood Health Center<\/a>, one of 13 independent, nonprofit clinics that collectively serve more than 130,000 low-income residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The number of the health center\u2019s patients with Medi-Cal has declined by approximately 2,000 since January, Robert said. Over the same period, the number enrolled in Healthy San Francisco increased by only 200.<\/p>\n

Robert said the clinic has not tracked what happened to each of the 2,000 patients \u2014 some may have moved or switched health systems \u2014 but it is seeing increases in both uninsured visits and visits by Healthy San Francisco patients.<\/p>\n

Healthy San Francisco does reimburse clinics for patient visits, but, said Denisse Porter, the Mission Neighborhood Health Clinic\u2019s chief clinical operations officer, these reimbursements fall short of the actual cost of these visits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Porter added, the clinic was seeing more patients miss appointments, and fail to fill prescriptions. The Mission health center helps patients enroll in and maintain their Medi-Cal coverage, and the clinic\u2019s enrollment navigators are struggling to obtain answers about patients\u2019 pending Medi-Cal applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve established care and relationships and trust with patients for many years,\u201d Porter said. Seeing patients lose access to that care, she added, is \u201cvery concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Enrollment in Healthy San Francisco, the city\u2019s healthcare program of last resort for uninsured residents, has grown by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[4735,1280,166475,14,1556,186328,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-473774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-department-of-public-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthy-san-francisco","tag-immigration","tag-mission","tag-mission-neighborhood-health-center","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}