Local compay works on cutting hospital bills, solving heath care crisis

Boca Raton- A local company says it has a simple solution to make health care more affordable for everyone. And all you have to do is let them take a look at your hospital bill. CBS 12's John Bachman got an exclusive inside look at the company and how they hope to revolutionize the way we all pay for medical care.

If you've been to the hospital for even routine surgery. The costs can be outrageous. Take latex gloves for example. One hospital charged a patient 53 dollars for each pair for gloves. They are supposed to be included in the cost of a hospital stay.

Now a Boca Raton based company call Truefacs, LLC is working to protect patients from what they call bogus charges just like those gloves.

Their office looks like your standard office setting. But there's one huge difference, business is humming at I-can Benefit, a national medical insurance agency and parent company of Truefacs. The company employs more than 200 agents and helps people and corporations find health insurance at any price level. Still something's eating away at chairman Harold Shatz.

"The hospital billing system is broken. It is absolutely broken. It can be fixed. It should be fixed," Shatz said.

He says he started to get a clearer picture of just how broken "the system" is, a few years ago. That's when he hired Nora Johnson to help teach his employees how to negotiate more effectively with hospitals.

"It's like trying to interpret hieroglyphics for most people. Well I made that my business to learn," said Johnson.

Learning about hospital billing was a personal mission for Nora. After her husband had hip replacement surgery, she requested a copy of his bill.

"A few items jumped out at me as perhaps being incorrect, and they are right here and it says one "ABO type new born and then one RH type chord blood," said Johnson

That's right, Nora's husband was charged for items normally an expense for child birth.

"I promise you he did not have a baby," Nora joked.

So she fought the hospital and the charges, and wound up saving thousands of dollars. She studied for 18 hours a day for two years learning the billing codes, and medical language. She then went to work helping people cut bogus charges from their bills. That brings us back to that training session at I-can. After that, Harold decided to start a company with the help of Nora's expertise called Truefacs, LLC.

They audit hospital bills before patients pay up. Both Nora and Harold say their passion is to end unfair hospital billing practices. And that would do a lot to ease the health care crisis.

"Health care should not be a privilege. It should be a right of Americans," said Johnson.

"We are hear to help as many people as we can," added Shatz.

Truefacs has a copyrighted system backed by federal law to help them during these audits. They are for profit company, but they get paid based on how much they recover and each case differs. They estimate they saved individual patients and companies millions of dollars on medical bills. If you want to find out if Truefacs here's a link to their site:

TheTrueFACS.com