HARRISBURG -- It took a year longer than expected, but a noted Pennsylvania agency on hospital and health costs has finally won a five-year extension on life.

The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council has been renewed until June 30, 2014, by legislation that Gov. Ed Rendell signed last week.

PHC4, as it is often called, "is broadly acknowledged as the nation's premier agency of its kind," Mr. Rendell said, adding that it has helped bring about improvements in hospital care over the last 12 years that "have saved an estimated 49,000 lives and $1.7 billion in hospital charges."

The agency also has helped lower the mortality rate for heart bypass surgery and deaths from hospital-acquired infections. The extension measure was sponsored in the state Senate by Sen. Pat Vance, R-Cumberland, and in the House by Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-Luzerne.

The PHC4 bill was one of four major health-related measures the governor signed into law last week. Another will permit parents to keep their young-adult children on their health insurance plans until they turn 30.

The young adult must be single, live in Pennsylvania and have no dependents. The law won't take effect for six months, however.

Many people in their 20s are going to graduate school after college, can't get a job due to the poor economy, or get a job without insurance benefits. So they don't have health insurance of their own and have had to get off their parents' policies in their mid-20s.

Mr. Rendell said this measure "is the answer to the prayers of parents whose kids will be graduating from college and will be kicked off their health insurance policies because they've reached the maximum age. Parents and kids are stressed because the kids are now uninsured and are having trouble finding jobs."

According to the state Insurance Department, in 2008 there were more than 383,000 uninsured Pennsylvanians between the ages of 19 and 29, which accounted for 40 percent of the state's total uninsured population.

The third measure, which takes effect in 30 days, allows employees of smaller companies of two to 19 workers to continue their company-subsidized health insurance if they are laid off. The company pays 65 percent of the premium cost and the former employee pays 35 percent, for up to nine months.

This insurance option has existed for companies with 20 or more workers but now will include smaller firms.

The fourth bill will halt "payment for medical errors," Mr. Rendell said. It will now be illegal for health care providers to charge a patient or insurance company "when they've made a serious, preventable medical mistake."

For example, a hospital couldn't seek payment if a doctor amputated a patient's right leg when he was supposed to amputate the left leg, or when a person died after being given the wrong medication.

"Can you imagine any other business that charges you to fix a mistake that it has made?" Mr. Rendell said.

Such huge mistakes are sometimes called "never events," meaning they never should have happened. Such incidents account for about 140 deaths in hospitals a year, the governor said.

The five-year extension for the Health Care Cost Containment Council was originally supposed to take effect last June, but final action was delayed by disagreements between legislators and the governor over several other medical issues that were attached to the bill.

The council actually went out of business for a few days in early July 2008, idling its 44 employees, but Mr. Rendell renewed the commission twice, for six months at a time, through executive order.