Colorado To Pay Kaiser Permanente $10M Settlement for Alleged Medicaid Underpayments

Colorado has agreed to pay Kaiser Permanente $10 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that the state's Medicaid program "knowingly" underpaid the health plan by $14 million between 1996 and 2001, the Denver Post reports. Since 2000, four other suits have been filed by HMOs against the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, totaling about $150 million. The now-defunct Community Health Plan of the Rockies and Rocky Mountain HMO previously won payments from the state, and three other groups -- Colorado Access, a not-for-profit Medicaid HMO; the Denver Health Medical Center; and the University of Colorado Hospital -- are in negotiations with the state on back payments of $100 million and have a trial date set for December. The state has already paid $20 million of the $40 million debt it owes to health plans, including the Kaiser suit, the Post reports. Kristin Snyder, the vice president of prevention, public and government affairs at Kaiser, said, "It was a fair settlement. It does avoid the continuation of costly litigation." She added that Kaiser would spend $1 million or more of the settlement on community health programs and would use the rest of the money to build facilities and update record systems (Austin, Denver Post, 10/26).