Cartoon by Leo Cullum

Dining out in San Francisco has always been a pricey proposition. Now, it’s even more expensive as restaurants struggle to comply with a new city requirement that employers of more than 20 workers spend a minimum amount on their employees’ health care.  

Restaurant owners have raised prices or tacked surcharges onto bills to pay the new health care costs that—at a minimum—amount to $1.17 for every hour most employees work.  

Restaurateurs have asked a federal appellate court to block the law.  “We are talking survival here,” says Kevin Westlye, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which filed the lawsuit. Restaurants cannot afford to absorb growing health care costs, he says.  Restaurateurs already pay the country’s second-highest minimum wage, $9.36 per hour.

The AARP Foundation is defending the city’s program in court, saying it will help secure comprehensive health care reform.  “This case offers an appropriate forum for AARP to advocate for the power of states and their political subdivisions to undertake health care reform legislation to benefit their citizens,” says AARP attorney Jay Sushelsky.

Some restaurant patrons agree. “It gives me pleasure to help them get health care,” says Hilary Abramson of San Francisco. “Anybody in this city who can afford to eat out has no right to complain.”