18 U.S.C. § 4048 — Fees for health care services for prisoners

(a) Definitions. “Account” means a prisoner’s trust-fund account or institutional equivalent. “Director” means the Bureau of Prisons Director. “Health care provider” means a person authorized by the Director to provide health care services and acting within that authorization. “Health care visit” means a Director-determined visit by a prisoner to an institutional or noninstitutional provider, but not a prisoner-initiated visit made because of a staff referral or to obtain staff-approved follow-up for a chronic condition. “Prisoner” means a person incarcerated in a Bureau institution or another person the Director designates who has been charged with or convicted of a United States offense. (b) Fees. (1) Under this section and the Director’s regulations, the Director may assess and collect a fee for services connected with each prisoner-requested health care visit. (2) No fee may be assessed or collected for preventive care, emergency services, prenatal care, diagnosis or treatment of chronic infectious diseases, mental health care, or substance-abuse treatment, as the Director determines. (c) Who pays. The Director collects each fee from the account of the prisoner receiving the services, or, when the visit results from an injury one prisoner inflicted on another, from the account of the prisoner who inflicted it, as the Director determines. (d) Amount. The fee cannot be less than $1. (e) Consent and disputes. Prisoner consent is not required. Each prisoner must have a reasonable chance to dispute the fee amount or whether an exclusion applies. (f) Treatment. The section does not allow treatment to be refused because the account is insolvent or the prisoner cannot otherwise pay. (g) Use. (1) Money collected from a prisoner subject to a restitution order under section 3663 or 3663A must be paid to victims as the order requires. (2) Of money collected from others, 75% goes to the Crime Victims Fund under the cited law and 25% is available to the Attorney General for administrative expenses of this section. (h) Notice of law. Every prisoner or new prisoner must receive written and oral notice of this section and its applicability. No fee may be assessed or collected until 30 days after every prisoner in the prison system receives those notices, and no fee may cover services before that period ends. (i) Notice of regulations. The Director’s regulations and amendments cannot take effect until 30 days after every prisoner receives written and oral notice of them. They cannot support fees for services before that period ends. (j) Proposed regulations. Before public comment begins on a proposed regulation, the Director must give written and oral notice of it to prisoner-advocacy groups and every prisoner subject to it. (k) Reports. Within 1 year after enactment of the Federal Prisoner Health Care Copayment Act of 2000 and annually afterward, the Director must report to Congress on amounts collected in the preceding 12 months; any effects on the nature and extent of visits; implementation and administration costs; current inmate health-status indicators compared with the year before enactment; and health-care quality in the preceding 12 months compared with the 12 months ending on enactment. (l) HIV/AIDS services. When medically appropriate, the Bureau must provide each federal prisoner in its custody comprehensive coverage for HIV and AIDS services. It may not charge a fee for that coverage.