Kansas Atty. Gen. Phill Kline is grandstanding again.

The attorney general announced Thursday that his office was launching an investigation of the billing and collection practices of the state’s not-for-profit hospitals. The rising cost of health care makes hospital bills a handy hot-button issue that Kline seemed eager to exploit.

“Hospitals have a right to be paid for the services that they render,” he said. “But that right does not extend to unconscionable and coercive collection practices.”

The problem with collection practices apparently is so great that Kline found it necessary to launch a full-fledged investigation of the matter led by a former Atty. Gen. Bob Stephan. There are 121 not-for-profit hospitals in the state, and Stephan declared that every one of them would be investigated, apparently including our own Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

But what did the hospitals do to deserve such scrutiny? Kline said he was spurred into action by several complaints from consumers, but he declined to give details about the complaints or how many hospitals were involved.

The most egregious cases cited by Kline were instances in which hospitals sent claims to the wrong insurance company. Because the claims were delayed in getting to the correct company, some were denied and subsequently forwarded to collection agencies. Such billing mistakes may pose a problem, but they hardly seem to justify a high-profile shakedown of every not-for-profit hospital in Kansas.

It is completely unfair to cast a pall over all not-for-profit hospitals when only a small minority may warrant scrutiny. If the attorney general has received complaints, he should pursue those complaints individually and see that the hospitals involved take whatever remedial action is needed, but he has no right to place other not-for-profit hospitals, with no evidence of wrongdoing, under the legal microscope.

And why only not-for-profit hospitals? Are for-profit hospitals in Kansas any less likely to engage in unacceptable billing and collection practices, or do their corporate structures simply make them a more difficult target for the AG? Maybe the problem isn’t the hospitals at all, but with the collection agencies that deal directly with the consumers – or with insurance companies that are being overly rigid in their claims processes.

If the attorney general were less interested in making headlines and more interested in actually solving this problem for consumers, he would have bypassed the flashy investigation and pursued a more constructive approach. Individual hospitals are cooperating with AG investigators and officials of the Kansas Hospital Assn. are working with the AG’s office to develop a system of best practices for billing and collections.

That’s where the problem ultimately will be solved, not at a press conference.