Washington ? The hospital industry said Wednesday it would consider cutting the price of care for the uninsured in the face of growing complaints that hospitals charge such patients too much.

But the American Hospital Assn., which represents nearly 5,000 hospitals, pinned much of the blame for the high prices on inflexible federal regulations.

The AHA said it needed the government’s help if hospitals were to change the practice of charging uninsured patients the full retail price for medical procedures. Typically, participants in private and government insurance plans pay steeply discounted, negotiated rates.

“Federal Medicare regulations as written today contain a string of barriers that discourage hospitals from reducing charges or forgiving debt for these patients without potentially running afoul of the law,” AHA President Richard J. Davidson wrote Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.

The AHA is seeking protection for hospitals from penalties the government can impose on them for using financial incentives to draw customers or taking unfair advantage of a program in Medicare that reimburses hospitals for bad debts.

Centura Health, Colorado’s largest hospital system, this week dropped a plan to offer discount services to the uninsured, saying it might violate federal law. Consumer groups said the plan could have helped 700,000 uninsured Coloradans, some of whom make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.

Tom Gustafson, a Medicare official who oversees hospital reimbursements, said federal regulations do not prohibit hospitals from helping the uninsured, but said his staff would study the AHA requests.

The nation’s two largest for-profit hospital chains this year announced differing plans to offer discounts to the uninsured. Nashville-based HCA Inc., the largest chain, said it would offer help to low-income patients without insurance. Tenet Healthcare Inc., of Santa Barbara, Calif., said it would offer the uninsured discounts regardless of their income.

HCA has put its plan into practice, but Tenet has met with resistance from federal regulators and is awaiting a legal opinion from the HHS inspector general.