New Jersey Health Care Cost Growth Benchmark Program

About the HART Program

The Health Care Affordability, Responsibility, and Transparency (HART) Program is the culmination of work that began in January 2021 through Executive Order 217, which called for an Interagency Working Group of NJ Department leaders, chaired by the Director of the Office of Health Care Affordability & Transparency to design the program based on advice from a Health Care Affordability Advisory Group of stakeholders throughout the state, many of whom signed onto a compact promising to help achieve the benchmark targets and provide underlying data to track and promote progress on curbing cost growth. 

On December 21, 2021, Governor Murphy signed Executive Order 277, launching the state’s health care cost growth benchmarking effort – the HART Program – to help improve health care affordability for New Jerseyans. The program establishes targets aimed at slowing the rate of health care cost growth within the state and provides for data collection to track progress in achieving those targets and improving overall cost transparency. 

The program’s spending targets are set through 2027 and are calculated based on a combination of median income and potential gross state product growth projections, encompassing all areas of health care costs inside the state including insurance, hospital and provider, and pharmaceutical spending. This benchmarking effort is designed to ensure health care spending does not increase faster than the state’s economy or the pocketbooks of its residents. States throughout the country have adopted similar benchmarking programs, with success in holding spending growth below national averages.

Support for the HART Program

New Jersey continues to take part in the Peterson-Milbank Program for Sustainable Health Care Costs, launched by the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Milbank Memorial Fund. The program facilitates state-led activities that engage cross-sector stakeholders in designing, adopting, and implementing policies to measure health care costs and set state-wide health care cost growth rate benchmarks.

In addition, the Milbank Memorial Fund and Bailit Health are providing technical assistance to advance program implementation. Rutgers Center for State Health Policy is providing analytic and strategic guidance in support of the State’s efforts.