Therapists treating Medicaid enrollees in Colorado will have to get the state’s authorization to conduct more than 24 sessions with an individual patient in a year, as the department overseeing the program tries to rein in what it considers excessive spending.

Gov. Jared Polis ordered the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to reinstate prior authorization for outpatient mental health care, part of his effort to close the hole that federal tax legislation blew in the state budget. The agency had previously identified prior authorization as an area for possible savings.

Changes from H.R. 1, known as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” left the state with a $783 million shortfall for the current fiscal year, and while lawmakers made some tax tweaks to partially patch it, they lef

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