Guess this can go here
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After Lisa French’s doctors warned that she could be paralyzed if she tripped or fell on her back, the hospital told the Colorado resident that she’d have to pay an estimated $1,337 out of pocket for two procedures. Money was tight, which is why French and her husband used all the money in their emergency fund — $1,000 — to help cover most of the cost expected after insurance for the back surgeries, according to her attorney.
So when she got the bill from St. Anthony North Health Campus in 2014, French thought it was a mistake: The hospital had billed her for $303,709 — and she owed more than $229,000 out of pocket. As part of the forms she filled out at the nonprofit hospital in Westminster, Colo., operated by Centura Health, French unknowingly had signed up to pay all charges related to the hospital’s then-secretive “chargemaster” price rates — a master list of prices that determined the sticker prices for everything the hospital did.
Years after French argued she was never informed of the chargemaster and engaged in a years-long legal battle with the hospital, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in her favor this week, saying she is not liable to pay the rest of the massive bill because she did not agree to the hospital’s secret pricing schema. State Supreme Court Justice Richard Gabriel
wrote in a Monday opinion that Centura Health’s argument that French was required to pay “all charges of the hospital” was rejected because the “long-settled principles of contract law” showed that the 60-year-old woman never agreed to pay the chargemaster rate...........
When she went to the hospital, French was quoted the $1,337 out-of-pocket price before the surgery — a figure based on her health insurance provider being in-network with the hospital. But when a hospital employee mistakenly gave French the estimate after misreading her insurance card, Centura Health did not notify French of the change, according to a lawsuit.
As an office clerk at a trucking company, French’s insurance plan was connected to ELAP Services, a firm based in Wayne, Pa., that audits hospital bills to assess the value of the medical services provided, Lavender said. After her surgeries were completed, ELAP advised French’s employer-based insurer to not pay her hospital bill of roughly $229,000, alleging she had been grossly overbilled. ELAP and the insurer agreed to pay about $74,000.
Centura Health disagreed with ELAP and sued French for the rest of the bill in 2017...........
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/19/colorado-hospital-surgery-cost-french/