information for practice

New Jersey maintains one of the nation’s most generous hospital safety nets for the poor. Under the Hospital Care Payment Assistance Program, commonly called Charity Care, the state devotes more than half a billion dollars annually to inpatient and outpatient services for the uninsured and indigent. Despite the magnitude of this taxpayer-financed subsidy, borne evenly by the state and federal budgets, many of New Jersey’s 80 acute-care hospitals remain in dire fiscal straits because Charity Care covers only a portion of the actual cost incurred in caring for thousands who turn up at their doors every year for treatment claiming no other means of support. Amid this festering cost crisis, Charity Care’s funding has been re-visited many times by legislators and policymakers. The most recent change came three years ago when the Legislature altered the fund-distribution formula, ostensibly to ensure that hospitals with the heaviest share of the Charity Care burden would receive the largest subsidies.