The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the lone battler in the struggle against "Healthy San Francisco", has found a couple of bigger friends to fight back against the City & County of San Francisco's bullies. The National Business Group on Health (NBGH) and the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) have just announced that they will join the local restaurateurs' trade association in its appeal against a federal court ruling that San Francisco's tax-hiking Health Access Program, a.k.a. Healthy San Francisco, conforms to the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
We've discussed the negative consequences of Healthy San Francisco a lot. I won't dwell here on why the city should not levy an extra tax on businesses, which already cannot afford to provide health benefits, in order to expand its public health bureaucracy.
Instead, I'd like to ask (rhetorically): Why did it take so long for these big business lobbies to figure out that they had a dog in this fight? If San Francisco can simply impose such a tax hike without any check or balance, then so can any county or municipality in the country.
Too many business groups waste time and money on feel-good PR initiatives. (The Business Roundtable's and National Federation of Independent Business' expensive and vague Divided We Fail campaign springs to mind.)
It's good to see NBGH and ERIC finally realize that they have to get into the trenches and fight for real freedom from overweening government control of health care.
