EDITORIAL: Polis’ heavy-hand with the veto pen scuttled three good laws

There was no shortage of consequential measures power-pushed through the 180-day, now-ended legislative session that warranted a slow, careful look.

Three of those bills, however, should be law now and instead were vetoed by Gov. Jared Polis, we think wrongly.

The first, and most surprising, was Polis’ veto of House Bill 1088 created to prevent so-called “surprise billing” for ambulance services, one of the lingering symptoms of America’s chronic and debilitating health-care ailment.

The problem is easy to understand. Just a few years ago, some U.S. health insurance customers would too-frequently receive “surprise” hospital bills after discharge, and often in addition to hefty co-pays as insurance companies worked to find ways to maximize patient out-of-pocket costs and maximize insuran