Free Republic

San Francisco is preparing to become the first U.S. city to provide and cover the cost of sex reassignment surgeries for uninsured transgender residents. The city's Health Commission voted Tuesday to create a comprehensive program for treating transgender people experiencing mental distress because of the mismatch between their bodies and their gender identities. The vote was announced Thursday. The idea came out of conversations between public health officials and transgender rights advocates who wanted mastectomies, genital reconstructions and other surgeries covered under San Francisco's universal health care program.

San Francisco must have taken a chapter out of Laer Pearce’s new book “Crazifornia.” The city’s new CleanPower SF plan garners subsidies from U.S. taxpayers for green-power purchases. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But you would have to be crazy not to shift your green power purchases onto U.S. taxpayers if laws provide for it. And what city wouldn’t want to do it if it could cover it up as part of their compliance with AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006? San Francisco is “gaming the system,” just as Enron supposedly did in the 2001 state energy...

More San Francisco adults smoke than those in most other urban and suburban counties in California, according to data on smoking rates released by state health officials Monday. The numbers, which are based on 2008 data and for the first time include statistics from every county, show that adult smoking rates statewide have dropped 42 percent since 1988 to the lowest levels ever - 13.1 percent. That makes California second to Utah, which has the country's fewest smokers per capita. Counties that are more urban and suburban tend to have significantly lower smoking rates than rural areas. Exceptions in California...