Last week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to create a health care plan to provide health care coverage for the 85,000 uninsured residents of that city. While there are additional votes needed to finalize the bill, with a unanimous vote and the endorsement of the mayor, the proposed ordinance is expected to become law with no problem.

The San Francisco Health Access Plan is the first health care law in the nation that might actually achieve universal health coverage in a jurisdiction, but it caps a year when the debate to achieve health care for all became far more real in a number of states than in the past.