Medical bills from Maine hospitals are confusing, opaque, and sometimes carry arbitrary and hidden costs — including a common surcharge that hospitals call a “facility fee,” charging hundreds of dollars simply for getting treatment in a hospital.

A 2022 Portland Press Herald in-depth journalistic investigation exposed a byzantine system of medical billing oftentimes inuring insurance companies for obfuscating reasons for sometimes denying reimbursement of claims, as well as the aforementioned arbitrary billing practices.

Maine lawmakers this session approved a bill requiring hospitals and other health care facilities to inform patients that they charge “facility fees” in a watered-down version of L.D. 2271, a bill to regulate when and how the often costly fees to “defray operational costs” are being imposed upon consumers.

On April 25 a better-than-nothing iteration of the bill became law, minus Gov. Janet Mills’ signature.

Jon St. Laurent, North Windham and formerly Lovell