A public option -- and an employer mandate -- are working in San Francisco

People don't talk much about the health-care reforms San Francisco put into place in 2006, but Carrie Hoverman Colla, William H. Dow and Arindrajit Dube have looked into the early evidence, and it's encouraging:

In 2006 San Francisco adopted major health reform, becoming the first city to implement a pay-or-play employer health spending mandate. It also created Healthy San Francisco, a “public option” to promote affordable universal access to care. Using the 2008 Bay Area Employer Health Benefits Survey, we find that most employers (75%) had to increase health spending to comply with the law, yet most (64%) are supportive of the law. There is substantial employer demand for the public option, with 21% of firms using Healthy San Francisco for at least some employees, yet there is little evidence of firms dropping existing insurance offerings in the first year after implementation.

I guess in San Francisco, even the private businesses are run by socialists.