Think again.

It turns out that a significant chunk of those surcharges have been quietly padding the city's general coffers rather than actually covering healthcare for restaurant workers. San Francisco's Healthy San Francisco ordinance, which requires employers to spend a minimum amount on employee healthcare, created a system where restaurants could comply by paying into the city-administered program. The problem? Much of that money sat in city accounts, unclaimed and unspent on actual worker healthcare, while restaurants bore the reputational cost of tacking surcharges onto every check.

Restaurant owners are furious — and honestly, they should be. The city essentially created a mandate, forced businesses to collect money from customers under the guise of worker benefits, and then kept a hefty portion for itself. That's not healthcare policy. That's a backdoor tax with better PR.

Let's be clear about who got hurt here. Diners paid more. Restaurant owners dealt with customer complaints and the awkwardness of an extra line item they didn't want. Workers — the people supposedly being helped — didn't see the full benefit. And the city? The city made out just fine.

This is what happens when government inserts itself as the middleman in transactions it has no business managing. San Francisco could have simply required employers to offer health benefits and let the market sort out the details. Instead, it built a bureaucratic tollbooth that extracted money from everyone involved while delivering a fraction of the promised value.

The surcharge debate has simmered for years, but this latest revelation should bring it to a boil. If the city mandated these charges to help workers, the money needs to reach workers — every dollar, fully accounted for. And if it can't manage that basic task, it should scrap the program entirely and stop using restaurants as unwilling tax collectors.

San Francisco already makes it hard enough to run a restaurant. The least City Hall could do is stop skimming off the top.