New Jersey Hospital Puzzle: Paying $2 Million for $674,856 Bill

Last year, officials overseeing New Jersey’s employee health plan — which covers the state’s teachers, cops and other public workers — discovered something that made no sense. The state had been billed $674,856 for a patient’s care at NewYork-Presbyterian. But it had paid $2,026,524, some three times what it was charged.

It wasn’t an isolated incident either. A review by the state’s Treasury department of the 50 biggest out-of-state hospital claims in 2020 showed the state paid millions in excess of what was actually billed, even though New Jersey’s contract with insurer Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey ...