NJ law caps hospital prices for uninsured

Anne Zieger — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:09:03 -0400

Following a trend emerging in recent years across the country, New Jersey has enacted a law capping hospital prices for low- and middle-income uninsured patients. The new law is one of four bills signed by the state's governor, including a measure expanding the state's power of oversight over troubled hospitals. Under the new pricing law, hospitals aren't allowed to charge more than 15 percent above Medicare's rate for services to uninsured patients with incomes below 500 percent of the federal poverty level. (The poverty level is presently $21,200 for a family of four.) The monitoring law, meanwhile, allows the state's health commissioner to appoint an official for hospitals at risk of foreclosure, as measured by the guidelines for intervention created by the New Jersey Commission on Rationalizing Health Care Resources.

To find out more about these measures:
- read this Modern Healthcare article (reg. req.)

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