(1) All rates, charges, and classifications made, demanded, or received in the operation of a licensed facility located in the state of Colorado shall be just and reasonable. Every unjust or unreasonable charge made, demanded, or received with respect to such operation is prohibited.
The power and authority is hereby vested in the state board of health and it is herebymade the duty of the board in promoting public health and safety to adopt necessary rules and regulations to govern and regulate the rates, charges, and classifications of every facility in this state and to prevent unjust, unreasonable, and discriminatory rates, charges, and classifications of every such facility.
(a) Under such rules and regulations as the state board of health may prescribe, any person operating a facility in this state shall file with the state board of health, at least sixty days prior to the proposed effective date and in such form and with such filing fee as the state board of health may designate, proposed schedules showing all rates, charges, and classifications collected or enforced or to be collected or enforced. Such rates, when effective, shall be posted and open to public inspection at the facility.
(b) The board shall make available for public inspection the filing and supporting information and provide reasonable public notice thereof.
(4) (a) Unless the board otherwise orders, no change shall be made in any rate, charge, or classification collected or enforced or to be collected or enforced by a facility except after sixty days of filing with the board. All filings shall be kept open for public inspection with new schedules stating plainly the changes to be made in the schedules then in force and the time when the changes will go into effect.
The board shall not approve or disapprove a filing without a public hearing. If theboard does not disapprove or schedule a hearing on a filing within sixty days of receipt by the board, the filing shall automatically become effective.
During the sixty-day review period, the board may conclude that it is in the publicinterest to hold a public hearing, or an interested person may request a public hearing by so petitioning the board. Such hearings shall be held in the manner provided in article 4 of this title.
(5) (a) Whenever the board after a hearing upon its own motion or upon petition finds, based upon the record and investigation by the board, that the rates, charges, or classifications collected or enforced or to be collected or enforced by any facility are unjust, unreasonable, discriminatory, or violative of any provision of law or that such rates, charges, or classifications are insufficient, the board shall determine the just, reasonable, or sufficient rates, charges, classifications, rules, regulations, or practices to be thereafter observed and in force and shall fix the same by order of the board.
(b) The board has the power, after a hearing upon its own motion or upon complaint, to investigate a single rate, charge, classification, or practice or the entire schedule of rates, charges, classifications, or practices of any facility and to establish new rates, charges, classifications, or practices in lieu thereof.
Source: L. 82: Entire part added, p. 406, § 1, effective July 1.