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Colorado woman Lisa French wins lawsuit against hospital for surprise billing.
A woman who was going to pay $1,500 for two surgeries ended up paying $30,000. Colorado Supreme Court ruled in her favor and exempted her from paying that surplus that the clinic wanted to charge her. The justice agreed with him by determining that the woman had never been notified of the real price of the surgeries.
Lisa French underwent two surgeries in 2014. Since then, she began litigating to avoid paying what many consumers in the United States suffer as “surprise billing.”
The Colorado judges agreed with him by unanimous decision. They considered that he should not pay additional charges to the St. Anthony North Health Campus in Westminster for those two surgeries performed in 2014.
The additional charge came from a list of secret costs that was never properly communicated to the patient. This practice is usually a common device of certain companies or service providers to increase the spending of their customers.
hidden charges
Lisa French and her husband spent most of their emergency fund to cover the costs of the surgeries. They believed that St. Anthony’s was a provider hospital for their insurance network.
According to the Colorado justice, a hospital employee informed them of an incorrect price, much lower than what they later wanted to charge him, allegedly because he misread the patient’s insurance card. The Denver Post confirmed that the hospital was not in Lisa French’s insurance network.
French’s total bill was $300,709. While the insurance covered 74 thousand dollars.
The lawsuit against Lisa French
The hospital’s lawyers sued Lisa French for payment of the rest, which was missing to complete the billing determined by the medical center.
The lawyers alleged that the woman had agreed to pay “all hospital charges.” The court noted, however, that these charges were never properly specified in the contracts.
“Internal fees have become increasingly arbitrary and, over time, have lost any direct connection to actual hospital costs, reflecting instead inflated fees set to produce a specific amount of profit for hospitals after payment. take into account the discounts negotiated with private and government insurers,” argued Richard Gabriel, a member of the court that exempted Lisa French.
States like Oregon, California and New York fight what is called surprise billing every day. On January 1, a law (“Law without surprises”) came into force that aims to protect consumers from arbitrary costs.
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