We've finally learned the identity of a mysterious $1 million donor to a Super Pac supporting Jersey City mayor and aspiring governor Steve Fulop.

It's the wealthy mogul behind the most notorious price-gouging hospital in the nation. Fulop once recommended this man's company for a city contract. Which raises the question: Could it look any worse?

Vivek Garipalli and the for-profit hospital system he owns, called CarePoint, donated nearly a third of the $3.2 million raised last year by the Pac with close ties to Fulop, called "Coalition for Progress." More than three quarters of that total stash was from people who do business with Jersey City, either personally or through their companies, like Garipalli.

The hospital exec formed a shell company in Delaware the day before making his donation, for the sole purpose of hiding it. Thanks to the Supreme Court decision Citizens United, Pacs can take and spend unlimited money from corporations. But it's illegal to intentionally mask the source of the donation.

Only after pressure from watchdog groups, though, did the Pac finally reveal Garipalli's name. You see why he wanted to hide it. That this is the outfit now throwing serious muscle into Jersey politics on Fulop's behalf should give us all pause.

Fulop, of course, is claiming cluelessness. Even though he threw a fundraiser for this Pac last year -- as did his long-time confidante, Tommy Bertoli, a political operative based in Jersey City -- he insists it has nothing to do with him.

But he's certainly familiar with CarePoint, the company behind America's most expensive for-profit hospital, Bayonne Medical Center, and its shamelessly predatory business model. First it goes out of network with insurance companies. Then it tries to drive up traffic to its emergency room - and charges exorbitant fees for those out-of-network visits, like $17,000 for five stitches.

It's a golden goose for Garipalli, who replicated this at his two other hospitals in Jersey City and Hoboken -- and bought jewelry designer Tory Burch's $11 million Hamptons estate in 2012, only to tear it down and build a bigger one.

But it's a $1 billion-a-year-disaster for New Jersey. That's how much this shady tactic is adding to our health care costs. State law offers consumers some protection, so they may pay only a small portion of the bill. Yet insurers like Horizon get walloped, driving up prices and premiums for everyone.

Despite the efforts of reformers like Sen. Joe Vitale, the Legislature has been unable to produce a solution. One key holdout is a Fulop ally, Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, who has yet to move the stalled bill. So the public deserves to know: Does Fulop support CarePoint's predatory model, or Vitale's embattled legislation to rein it in?

He won't say. But if Fulop doesn't come out now and denounce CarePoint's tactics as wrong, he'll join it as a bad actor.

This isn't just a state issue, either. Since Jersey City self-insures its employees, his local taxpayers are the ones getting hit with these crazy out-of-network bills.

Fulop's past actions also make this look suspect. A CarePoint lobbyist, former U.S. Senator Bob Torricelli, contributed $5,000 to Fulop and $2,500 to his slate of council candidates during the last election. Shortly after, Fulop tried to switch an ambulance contract from Jersey City Medical Center to CarePoint's offices.

At the time, he said it was a better bid for the city, because CarePoint promised to give back $2.6 million annually for the contract. But it also would have funneled many more patients into CarePoint's emergency rooms, making that give-back pocket change for the company.

Fulop ultimately lost the effort to switch the contract, and changed course under pressure. But you see the threat here.

In his early days, he pitched himself as a campaign finance reformer. More recently, though, he's argued that as long as a Pac remains "independent" from the candidate it supports, it can take donations from anyone who does business with the city.

How convenient. Does this mean Fulop's going to keep turning a blind eye to CarePoint's price-gouging? Or will he reverse course yet again, and do the right thing?

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