DENVER — The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing released a report Thursday that accused several Front Range "mega" hospital systems of price-gouging Colorado consumers to fatten their own wallets.
The announcement came one day before a Joint Budget Committee hearing on costs for a public option plan and the state's 2019 reinsurance program, which are expected to exceed initial estimates by hundreds of millions of dollars.
And at least one lawmaker in Thursday's news conference used the time to strike back at the hospitals and others who are running a six-figure ad campaign decrying aspects of the public option plan released last November.
The HCPF report, an analysis of Colorado hospital cost-shifting, claimed hospitals, primarily large for-profit and non-profit hospitals in the Front Range, have failed to reduce health care costs, despite state efforts going back more than a decade to reduce the burden of uncompensated care. The report is a final one that follows a draft report from January 2019.
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