Monday’s decision overturns the Colorado Court of Appeals, which had found in favor of the hospital. None of those protections were in place when French underwent her surgeries in 2014.
Few patients actually pay the chargemaster’s sticker prices for care, because insurance companies negotiate lower prices with the hospital to become “in-network.”Ĭolorado’s backlog of COVID-delayed jury trials is shrinking, but lingersĬolorado lawmakers in 2017 passed a law requiring hospitals to make some self-pay prices public, and in 2019, a federal agency required hospitals to make their chargemaster prices public. The justices also noted that chargemaster prices are divorced from actual costs for care. “(French) assuredly could not assent to terms about which she had no knowledge and which were never disclosed to her,” Justice Richard Gabriel wrote in the court’s opinion. The state Supreme Court justices rejected that argument, finding that “long-settled principles of contract law” show that French did not agree to pay the chargemaster prices when she signed the contracts, which never mention or reference the chargemaster. A hospital employee gave a mistaken estimate after apparently misreading French’s insurance card.Īfter her surgeries, the hospital billed $303,709 for French’s care her insurance paid about $74,000 and the remaining balance of $228,000 was disputed in a civil case.Īttorneys for Centura Health, which operates the nonprofit hospital, had argued that the contracts, which required French to pay “all charges of the hospital” for her care, implicitly included the hospital’s then-secret pricing schema. Anthony North Health Campus do not obligate her to pay the hospital’s secretive “chargemaster” price rates, because the chargemaster - a list of the hospital’s sticker prices for various procedures - was never disclosed to French and she had no idea the chargemaster existed when she signed the contracts.Īt the time, the hospital had represented to French that the surgeries were estimated to cost her $1,337 out of pocket, with her health insurance provider covering the rest of the bill.īut the hospital’s estimate was based on French’s insurance provider being “in-network” with the hospital, which it was not. The justices unanimously found that the contracts patient Lisa French signed before a pair of back surgeries in 2014 at St.
Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close MenuĪ woman who expected to pay $1,337 for surgery at a Westminster hospital nearly a decade ago but was billed $303,709 may finally be off the hook for the massive bill after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in her favor Monday.
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