DENVER — A new Colorado law prohibits hospitals that haven’t posted their prices from suing patients over unpaid bills, but the bigger impact of the legislation may be indirect, as customers use those prices to decide where to get care.
Under federal law, hospitals are required to have a list of “shoppable” services and a machine-readable file that includes the prices they charge to insurance plans and people paying cash. Typically, that’s a very large spreadsheet of diagnostic codes.
House Bill 1285, which Gov. Jared Polis signed on June 9, prohibits hospitals that haven’t posted the required price information from sending patients’ debt to collections, suing them or reporting the debt to entities that calculate credit scores.
