We came to a point where acquiring diseases and viruses no longer makes us super anxious, but rather from receiving a lengthy hospital bill and medical expenses! In this episode, Jen and Jill, together with Scott Speranza, CEO of HealthLock, discover a long list of medical billing errors and share ways to identify and dispute healthcare overbilling.
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Episode four oh seven, Identifying healthcare over billing with Scott's Beranza.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity and life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Mmm, welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and we got a sexy little episode for you today about medical healthcare over billing.
So it's too hot to handle.
It's so hot, it's spicy. I know you guys are gonna love it. It is. Actually, this is a topic that is worth your time to know, and it's also worth your time to know when it's not worth your time. So we're we're really excited to chat with Scott. And he's a he's a CEO of health, and you don't always know what you're getting with CEO. Sometimes they know how to run a business, but they don't know all about the service that they're running. But Scott was very knowledgeable. So you're gonna get a lot out of this episode.
I have come across my own medical billing issues, so anytime we're able to talk about this, it feels like true tangible helpful resources just for me. I hope that that's the case for you guys as well. And yeah, Scott's really helpful and also just a lot of commiserating. If you find yourself tuning into this episode and you're just like this is so much, there's that for you too in this episode. Also side note, Scott is in Tennessee and there was a hurricane no no sorry for tornado warning happening, so as we get closer to the bill of the week, you might hear some sounds that our editors can't remove. We decided not to end it with Scott, but to let the winds blow as the will, and we will power through.
Yeah, let the winds blow as they will.
But first are forewarned.
But first, this episode is brought to you by tubes, tiny little tubes they put in your child's ear because they keep getting ear infections and the doctor won't give you any more antibiotics because you dried all of them multiple times, since something called antibiotic resistance is a factor. Anyways, you never know when you're gonna need tiny tubes, So the minute your baby gets their first ear infection, you should probably start saving for them in a high yield savings account like ciit CIT's savings connect account is currently offering four point sixty five percent API, which will be helpful if you are duped into seeing a doctor who only does their surgeries in a hospital. We'll talk about that later. Actually, it actually won't cover the upcharge, so you should definitely ask where they do their tube surgeries before you make that first appointment. Anyways, Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash CIT because hospitals and children and stuff like that are expensive, and you should say for them.
Speaking of a lot of commiserating in this epper information while also complaining about her own experiences.
Nobody's perfect. Some people get stressed and make stress based financial decisions, but if you're making eighty percent of your decisions out of a place of health, then the twenty percent that are made out of stress are not as impactful. There you go, Bam, that's the episode. Got the see you next week. I'm just kidding. If you are interested in more healthcare related content. Episode three point fifty eight, Jill and I share our personal experiences with healthcare sharing because we both use healthcare sharing instead of insurance. It's a really whatever works for you thing. And if you don't know if it'll work for you. Episode three fifty eight is the one to listen to. Episode two thirty Negotiating medical Bills with Doctor Vergie Bright Ellington is also kind of required less for this podcast. That's one of our most popular episodes. Doctor Virgie is a doctor and patient advocate. She wants you to spend as little for her services as a doctor as possible. And so this is all about negotiating your medical bill. Super super useful episode two thirty and so today's is with Scott'speranza, the CEO of Healthloc. Healthfloc is a like a cutting edge disruptor in healthcare billing and fraud protection, and as the chairman and CEO of Healthlock's parent company in Assist, he's led both companies to audit over half a billion dollars in medical claims and saved members more than one hundred and thirty million dollars over the past decade through all the innovative technology and monitoring Healthlock is coming up with. So we are sure that you're going to get some useful information out of this one.
Let's do it.
Scott, Welcome to Frugal Friends. This is going to be a good episode. I know this is going to be one that people ask about and talk about, because our last medical bill episode was one that people asked about and talked about for a long time. So we're super excited to have you here.
Well, it's great to be here. I appreciate it. And yeah, we all have medical bills, so of course we're all going to encounter that wonderful healthcare system that we have, which is fantastic, but boy, those bills can be a real pain.
Yeah, I'm so glad that you're here. It's one of those episodes where if it's not front of mine, people will just keep scrolling. But for those tuning in, there's a real reason that they're here and can bring a lot of uncertainty and anxiety and just financial frustration. So from your perspective and the work that you've done, can you kind of outline for us what you've seen are some of the most common medical billing errors.
Sure, and you know, even before we jump into that, you just said the word anxiety, and most people don't know that one, especially pre COVID, a large medical bill was the number one anxiety for American consumers more than like losing my job or the economy, and so forth, and that has shifted a little bit. But the number one stress financially or as at least to healthcare is the out of pocket expenses that you pay, not your premiums, but you're out of pocket expenses. And so those are the things that we look at. So when you think about what does overbilling look like, it's you know, look first, the statistics say at all there were forty percent or more of medical bills have errors. It could be a coding error, it could be a duplicate service, it could be a balance bill. There's all these different things that can occur, but the statistics say that we're kind of set up for it. The most glaring one is a denial of benefits, so where my insurance just says we're not going to pay this bill, and of course you owe one hundred percent of that out of pocket expense. And about twenty percent of Americans more going to get a denied bill this year, a denial of service from their carrier. As twenty percent, that's all that's a major part of the market. There's like forty million denied claims a year, So you've got this, you know, kind of think of it like the tax based system. So we have you know, accountants and tax advisors and specialists that every year look at our financials, look at the laws, the codes, all the parameters that it takes to do your taxes, and that expert then deciphers what potentially you owe in taxes or of course you're recouped. Well, the medical code language, this CPD cpt ICD ten coding language, actually has one hundred thousand lines of code. It's almost more complex than the tax system as it relates to the legalities. And so you have all these codes that then represent an a line item task, which then represents a financial dollar amount. And then all these codes come together and they create the actual bill that's adjudicated with the carrier, and then of course whatever you might owe. And the third parbaty statistics say that they're three hundred and fifty three and twenty five billion dollars lost every year from overbilling in fraud. It's a major problem and it affects all of us.
Wow, yeah, that is anxiety.
Oh my gosh.
When it's a medical bill, so you're doing something that you aimed at health. I want to repair something that's broken or fix something that's going on. That comes with its own anxieties, and then to feel like you're up against the system that can feel so just mysterious. All the CPT codes in the ICD ten that you're listing out, it's like, do we have to be experts on this?
Well, it's not the only service I can think about where we don't know what we're going to pay before we get our service. Yeah, and this is by the way, for medical dental vision RX. Right, So all those things are healthcare expenses. But of course we might go to the drug store and we think we're going to get a fifteen dollars you know, copay for RX, and all of a sudden they want to charge seven hundred and fifty dollars. What happened here? And now I'm stuck in line and I've got this big bill and it's stressful, and you just never know what's going to happen because it's a complex system. And again, especially when it relates to adjudicating gets assurance. So judication is that word that says, you know, an occurrence, a medical occurrence, medical dental vision RX, an occurrences, a healthcare occurrence has happened, and I have insurance and so someone's going to go bill my insurance company first and say, well, how much money is the insurance company going to pay me for the service, And everybody's got a different price, everyone's got different negotiated rates. And then that claim gets adjudicated. And then I received that wonderful thing called an explanation of benefits in EOB, and that EOB basically says, this is not an invoice, but this is potentially what you owe. And then of course you've got the doctor, provider lab whatever it might be, actual invoice. A lot of times those don't match. And of course what we're finding is that there are errors, unfortunately that are made, whether they're simple, complex, whether they're nefarious or just simple mistakes. All those things we see. And we've now saved well over one hundred and thirty million dollars for our customer base. And we have stories after stories of people maybe literally save them from bankruptcies because sixty six percent of all bankruptcies in the United States are due to medical bills. So it's not something that's actually getting better, it's actually getting worse.
Wow. So in addition to the denial of benefits, what are would you say the top over billing errors that you see, like most often with people.
Sure, so the first thing would be just a charge that's outrageous, right, So, like you know, a bill that might be one hundred and two hundred, three hundred percent over what we see is market value. Your MRI might be the simplest, right, Some MRIs might be a five hundred dollars, some are one thousand, some are twenty five hundred. Why what's the reason for the price difference? If there was something specific that was that you received in the MRI that caused that, that's one thing, But for the most part those are there's a lot of parody now with MRIs. So if we see a bill that comes in at three percent over our market price, that's going to get flagged. That's a common overcharge. You have things like a duplicate service where one doctor came in and said, hey, how you doing, and then another doctor came in a while later and said, hey, how are you doing? And there's two doctor codes on there for visits. That could equate to, of course a much larger bill. When did I check into the emergency room, that's a big deal, right, So if I check in before a certain period of time, in my twenty four hours. Those changes, those change the rates. There's things called upcoding. I go into an urgent care and I need a band aid for my cut, but they market as level five, which means my neck is profusely bleeding, and these are the codes that they use. And of course what you're seeing in the news today, this is a very common, unfortunate practice from the providers and even the carriers. We've seen with Change Healthcare and the UHC debacle data breach is a lot of billing issues now are being exposed for fraudulent billing potentially. So you know, the system is a good system, so I want to make sure that that's clear. I love our system. We're a supporter of the US based healthcare system. I think it's the best in the world for a thousand reasons. But it's complex. It's a six trillion dollar industry segment, one of our largest, and there's a lot of moving parts and everybody gets care and for the most part, our care is super good, but that billing can be super complex, unfortunately fraudulent. The latest statistics is there's one hundred and seventy one million patient records breached last year. The year prior there was about sixty million. The year prior to that there was I think about twenty million. Year prior to that was just a few million. So the thieves have really moved over to healthcare and taken it by storm. And a fraudulent bill which is also a balance bill. So one of the other keys is if you get a bill, your eob says you owe one hundred dollars and you get a bill for five hundred dollars, or you were never supposed to get a bill and you got a bill, Well what is that? And I've got some examples on that. So balance bills upcoding, denial of benefits obviously something that is just completely out of whack as far as the pricing is concerned. These are the things that a consumer needs to have awareness around so they can protect themselves in their pocketbooks.
Yeah, I was looking at this list in preparation for this episode, and it was I there were things on there that I had no idea as much as I will will look at itemized bills and stuff for when I take my kids to the doctor, like they're just things like the time you check into a hospital, whether they charge it is a twenty four hour or if they're just tacking on fifteen minutes here and there. Like I realized, like there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to healthcare, and it just takes like one or two bad eggs to like really do some destructive damage.
Yeah, you know, you hear the stories about you know, the thousand dollars aspirin that from a hospital or of course we just talked about the time you check in emergency care and so forth, and certainly you know hospital care is going to create potentially the largest bills. But you know, the average American spends I think it's about six thousand dollars ab out of pocket expenses. Now, some people, you know, go, well, I'm not sick, and they don't plan for an expense, and so you know, maybe they spend zero last year, but how do you know you're not going to spend ten twenty thousand this year. We don't know when we're going to have that medical care. And the statistics also say this not just hospital bills. The problem is really pervasive. It's from the drugs, you know, it's your labs, it's the doctor visits that all of a sudden you know, I went in for my my my preventive maintenance, and that was supposed to be zero charge, and then all of a sudden, I got a four an dollar bill from the labs. What happened? Yeah, it may be for your best it might be for your best care. But if you didn't approve that, that's a problem. And that's a surprise bill. That probably is an unplanned expense. And these are the things that add up and then of course, for a large percentage of folks, they end up in bankruptcy.
So where do we find these errors? Where do we go to look for them? And how are they hard to recognize? How do we even recognize them?
Well, you know, I came from the software space, and so so me coming into the healthcare space ten years ago, I was really eyes wide open and going, well, it's got to be pretty simple and straightforward, right, analytics and billing and codes and right, this thing's got to be pretty simple. Well it's not. And even from my perspective, and we have lots of doctors and nurses as clients as well, like they're in the industry, and they're like, yeah, I get confused too, And so sure, first of all, you've got to be able to understand medical terms to a certain extent. You've got to understand what kind of care am I getting, what kind of service is that producing? And then of course you've got to know the codes. So how do you know the codes? How do you tell if a code like our analytics show codes that either shouldn't be there or should be there, those are flags. How does the average consumer do that? It's very, very difficult, and so what you want to be able to do is really trust your provider up front and ask as much as possible what they think this is going to cost. They will have a difficult time answering that because again it could be well, we don't know exactly what kind of carr you're going to receive. We don't have your insurance in front of us, we don't know the negotiated rates. We don't know in the end if you're going to need lab A, lab B or lab C, So we can't tell you. But it might cost anywhere between five hundred dollars and one thousand dollars, and certainly try to get as much upfront as possible. The other thing is don't pay upfront. So we recommend to our customers that you know, let this let the process play out both with the provider, the carrier, and us quite frankly, in our service, because there could be things that of data is missing, an analytic catches an error, a denial becomes a partial denial, or potentially gets overturned because it's just a lacking of information. So the average consumer really has a tough place here. I mentioned those claim denials. So twenty percent of Americans are going to get a denied claim, only one percent are appealed, only one percent, and of that two out of three people lose. Our success rate is sixty eight percent. Why well, because it would be like, you know, as an average amateur, if I had a dispute and went to court and said, hey, judge, this just seems like too much money, can you please have them pay? I would lose. But we're able to go and say, hey, these are the codes that were used, these are the codes that should have been used, this is the average pricing, and this is why this charge was not only too expensive, but that benefit should have been covered by insurance. And here's the other cases that we've done that we've been a part of. To go ahead and affirm that this is a benefit that should actually be approved and paid for by your insurance. How does the average consumer do that? You know, that's a tall order. So we're really caught. Whether you're the CEO of a company down you are in the same boat, or a doctor and nurse. Like we talked about, you're in a complex system. From a billing perspective, you're in the best care in the world. You're going to get to the right serve to the right doctor of the right place. But there could be a lot of complexity on the billing side that we just don't have the skill sets to manage.
It. Sounds like calling as much as you can ahead of time to get some of those estimates is kind of an utmost important for an individual to be able to kind of compare and contrast versus just receiving the bill. On the back end, you might not know what you're even looking at, what's standard costs? Should I have expected this or not? And that might be where some people even can get tripped up, like I guess I have to pay it because I didn't even know what the cost might have been. I didn't check beforehand.
And there's things they call them price transparency tools. It's kind of Expedia online, right, So we go to an Expedia online. We can buy our flights, our hotel. Because it's very standardized, I can understand the quality and I can understand the location. So tools like that are coming, but only about one percent of folks use those, and they don't cover all things. Again, go back to the hospital. If I'm going from you know, in an emergency situation to a hospital, how do I know upfront via an Expedia what I'd have to pay for that hospital care. So those those tools and systems will never be able to manage healthcare pre costs if you will are pre payments in Expedia does for travel.
I recently came upon this. The there is a law that medical facilities are required to have price transparency somewhere on their website. Not everybody is in compliance with that. There is a deadline for coming into compliance with it, and a lot of it is based on self pay rates. And I had to dig the website did not want me to find it, but eventually I found it. Uh, and even there was a website I was able to use, at least for Florida, being able to kind of type in the zip code and what are kind of the standard amounts for the standard types of procedures within the county that I live in, within the state that I live in. And personally I found that really helpful just to kind of get my head around what can I expect to be paying for certain things. But of course, as you're describing, that's only if you have the luxury of knowing what's coming versus an unexpected emergency situation, and you can't be calling ahead, you are kind of stuck with the bill on the back end.
Yeah, legislatively, you know, the word transparency has definitely been in the news for the last four or five years, six years and having you know, providers post their prices, having carriers post their negotiated rates. There's no surprise bill act that came out, of course, and that was trying to mitigate a much larger problem. There's holes in that, of course, and there's also issues with the process. You know, it's eight nine, ten months behind, and you know, so yes, you know, there seems to be more show me more so I can navigate better. But as you mentioned, right, where is it on the website? What does it really mean? There could be a thousand light items on there, and I supposedly I've got to try to find out what my care is going to be and then that price point. It's very, very difficult, and I don't think it's going to be answered by one technical solution for the consumer to be empowered to then say, Okay, I'm in control of all this now I feel comfortable. It's just too complex.
So if we do find an error, if we do believe this seems like more than what it should be, we've been able to kind of call ahead, we're comparing the back and forth or it's post emergency situation, But it looks like they are trying to tack on too much. What can we do? What are our steps to be able to dispute some of those medical over billing errors.
Well, of course, if you've got a denial of benefit, your insurance company is not going to pay for either partial or are full of the care that you've got, then you definitely want to do an appeal. That appeal process is very specific to the carrier. So a UHC versus an anthem you know is going to versus a blue cross are going to have different forms, policies, procedures to go ahead and do the appeal. So do you have to learn that classically? You may have to go through too for six different levels of denial and then reappeal in order to get approvals. And we've got some famous cases of actually some pretty famous people. We also have a lot of actors, directors, producers, clients and so you know, some of the folks get surgeries. We had one that was pre approved for one hundred thousand dollars, pre approved, got the surgery, came back and then all of a sudden they turned around and said no, we're going to deny that that servicedred thousand. And it took us over a year and I think it was six or seven appeals to finally get that overturned. So the appealed process definitely, and then it's a matter if you've got to work with your your provider first. So they're the ones that are controlling you're at a pocket cost. They're the ones that are going to be delivering to you a bill. They're also the ones that have the collection agencies after you. And fifty three percent of all credit issues are medical related, so they're going to put a lot of pressure on you to pay that bill. But work with them to really explain why this is a why, how did you get this charge, how was this fee produced, what's the reason my insurance company isn't paying How much did my insurance company pay to the provider. That's a really key question. If I had a thousand dollars bill and my provider paid six hundred dollars and my balance bill was five hundred dollars, obviously there's something wrong there. And so those are the things that you've got to kind of break down what these charges are and then ultimately go back to the carrier if you feel Look, I went in there. This is a classic case. So you know, we had twins and every six weeks we had to go get a sonogram. My wife did, and so we'd go get the sonogram and we it was like a twelve dollars charge, and the insurance company would would pay a thousand, and then we get a bill for two hundred dollars and you know, healthloc would say no, that you don't owe that two hundred dollars, and literally the billing companies say, oh, we're so sorry, it's an error, we'll fix it. Six weeks later, we go and what happens the exact same two hundred dollars dollars bill and so at that point, you know Helthcock would report that that is something that we would consider fraudulent. That's a billing company taking advantage of balance billing and ooop, I'm so sorry. And if twenty thirty forty percent of people pay that two hundred dollars, that's free money to the billing company. By the way, the billiing company is paid by a percentage of revenue they collect for the doctor or hospital, so they're motivated for maximum dollars of course collected. And the doctors and hospitals just look at their balances and say, oh, fantastic, I got paid. I can pay the bills this this month. But they're not necessarily the ones that are doing the balance billings, these third party billing companies that are really at fault in this whole process. So work with those three things, right, the appeals process, your provider and breaking down those charges, and then back to the carrier if you feel like there's something suspicious happening or consistent happening with your provider, and they can also provide pressure and police them as well.
I think that's one of the things for me in even knowing who do I go to with this, because the system does feel so large and complex. It's who's the right person to call? And sometimes I can find myself getting bounced around. No, that's an insurance issue. No, that's your provider issue. No, that's a you issue. And that can take so much time. You have to have so much stamina. But it's helpful to hear, you say, beginning with the provider getting as much information as possible and really digging in is the place to start. That's helpful. And are we primarily talking with the billing department of the medical provider?
Well, and that's also you know, part of it too, is that when you call the doctor's office for schedule appointment, you're talking to somebody that's working in the doctor's office most of the time, with not all the times these billing companies are working outside of the physical office. They might be managing dozens and dozens of doctors, and so that's a different number, it's a different person. It's a different person every time you call in. And so anytime that a person you know, in our world, we hear stories. You know. Part of the value is just I don't have to do that. I don't have to spend the time to call forget that I might not even know what to say because I don't have the expertise, But just that time it takes of being on hold and getting the right person and walking through the process and asking all the right questions. And yeah, it's a third party. I would say probably about seventy to eighty percent of Gosh, there's a million plus practitioners out there, plus the hospitals and so forth. You're talking about a lot of workforce. Most of those use an outsourced billing company, and so you are working with that third party.
So is it important. I know when we were we did our last negotiating like Bills episode, I didn't realize how important getting an itemized bill was because they don't send you the itemized bill, right, They just send you this is the money you owe or it says this is not a bill, this is just theoretical money that you might Oh, who knows, Like, how do we get an itemized bill? And are there any things that we should be looking on that bill specifically for?
Yeah, so you know, an itemized bill is super important. Again, when you're going to a hospital stay, you know, you're talking about the complexity times ten to twenty versus obviously a primary care physician or a lab. Even if you're in some level of chronic care, there could be a consistency that gets created you go to a hospital for some kind of issue, urgent or not. And I don't think many people know that most of the staff that works at a hospital is outsourced. They're not necessarily paid by the company of the hospital. They are a part of potentially ten fifteen different companies and service providers. Some of those doctors are on staff at the hospital, but a lot of the support, the support staff is not. That creates billing complexity, and that's why it's hard to know. Sometimes get an itemized bill because they're aggregating the billing from lots of third parties that are at that hospital. But so for sure at a hospital, absolutely get the itemized bill. You know, we've talked about things that if you don't see something that you recognize, you got to ask a question to figure out, well, what was that service like, what occurred for that line item, what's the reason these prices look expensive? And again, if you look up those prices and you get a national average you're equipped to then go ahead and have a little more substance when you're speaking to somebody. That's again hard to do. And then of course if you've got you know, any type of questions, you can go in and actually see an advocate at a hospital. You go into the into the doctor's office and sit down with one of the folks. Obviously that's a lot of time, and just have them continue to explain what's the reason for these costs. Unfortunately, the equation is time and expertise. You know, the more time I put into something, the better questions I can ask, the better questions I ask, the better I can uncover what really the problem or issue is. But there's only so much limitation I can do. If I was, you know, not a trained lawyer, time and effort is only going to get me so far, and so having specialists help us is really the only solution that we can see that's really going to make a difference in people's outcomes over the long term.
Specifically, Yeah, it's unfortunately, but it's it's unfortunate, but I do agree it's so complex, and it is intentionally designed to be complex. So that leads us to our last question. So like, what does healthlock do to help patients through this process? And how could people get it for free?
So so health Dock's a digital platform that actually manages all of your medical bills for you. So this is technology that only we have and so we call it. We sync with your carriers, let's say it's Anthem. You enroll our platform then syncs with the anthem let's say platform, and now we're automatically retrieving the explanation of benefits. We're looking at the charges through our analytics. This is all automated half a billion dollars of claim processing to create these proprietary analytics to then tell you good to pay. So you get a verified check mark that says, hey, pay that four and a dollars and confidence because against your insurance market prices, we don't see any fraud, there were any medical data breaches at this in the last year. Go ahead and pay that bill with confidence, or we flag it because the analytics are saying something's not right. The price is too much, the coding isn't matching up correctly, there's codes that it shouldn't shouldn't necessarily be in this and then of course you had to denial the benefits, and you know, we of course go through and supply the appeal for you do we do all the resolution and again that's where we get this. You know, sixty eight percent of the time we're successful in those appeals. So so health foc is really a one stop shop. We actually break it up into savings, control and privacy. So of course we want to save you money and that's where we're you know, every day we're seeing savings and again over this one hundred and thirty million dollars to date. But then it also controls right peace of mind. People don't have to go and call the doctor or the carrier, the billing company. They just need to look and see what health Fox says as far as verified or flag right. And so what we see from our folks is that they just wait for us to tell them when to pay. And that's what we meant about not paying the bill up front. Let health foc go ahead and go through it's potted and ensure that that transaction is accurate, correct, and fail, and then go ahead and pay the bill. And then we also have the only twenty four to seven monitoring of doctors and facilities and labs and so forth. For data breaches, hippo violations, malware attacks, and so you know, as this crime is increasing, we have solutions for medical identity theft. Obviously, we talked about the fraud, medical fraud and this monitoring of your privacy to ensure that your doctors are abiding abiding by HIPPA one hundred percent, and that's becoming a really important issue for folks. So privacy control in savings, that's what health foc delivers. And we've got some really nice you know, references, case studies and all those kinds of things. But people just love the fact that it gives them peace of mind. I just wait for health fac to tell me what to do.
That's beautiful. There are two things in this life that I constantly say I wish someone else could do this for me. The first is cook. I want someone else to just cook all my by else for me, nutritious food that's and then fight all my battles, primarily with medicalels because it does take so much time, energy, stamina, know how time and I often bemoan how do people have time for this? How do they even know where to begin? And to have a resource like this that is doing a lot of that for you not just identifying it but also kind of getting into the weeds on how do we rectify it?
Is amazing and yeah, it's been a great journey. So we started with the high net worth entertainment space. I started the company in Los Angeles and now in Nashville. We've got you know, offices Phoenix, Nashville, whatever it might be, Los Angeles, and we have thousands of actors, directors, producers. You know, let's say that high net worth folks that have been enjoying our services for years. You know, we've got names that everybody would know. We've saved ten twenty thousand men's one hundred thousand of our case. We just save someone over two hundred thousand dollars. Health loc is the ability to take this to the masses. And so with our relationship now with MasterCard and other third party you know, large names that are coming. We're now able to get this service out to the masses and for everybody, regardless of your economic status, to be able to be protected by health LOOC. And we use that word protected because we think if you're getting overcharged, that's that's a that's a that's a protection that you need somebody standing in the gap to make sure that your finances are protected. And yes, medical identity, theft and fraud and those kind of things we resolve as well, but we're there to protect your pocketbook. And so health foc for the masses now has been just really exciting and fulfilling.
That's amazing. So how can people access it? If it is becoming more accessible for the masses? You mentioned MasterCard, Can you say more about that?
Yeah, sure, so health doc dot com right, so, you know, health and at l ock dot com and you can have your account set up. It takes just a few minutes. We actually sink and download up to the last two years of your medical bills first from the carrier, and we'll verify all those. The analytics will go through and say, hey, you spent this month the last two years. That's an eye opener. A lot of folks don't really realize what they spent out of pocket. And then these are all the ones that were verified. Those were good to pay. But you've got some flags, and most people have flags. We actually send this really nice automated you know, forty five second video that says, now, hey, Jill, you had you know, twenty five claims that were in the system. We verified twenty of those five were flagged. Here's what the five flag are. Go ahead and would you like us to open up a case and so we can go backwards and recover lost money. It was very exciting for our foots.
Yeah, love lost money finding it again.
And then of course when you go to the doctor and you might forget about us, right, might be six months, twelve months down the road. Remember we're monitoring that automatically. So we tell you, hey, Jill, by the way, you to the doctor that five a dollar bill, verify pay it? Or Jen that thousand dollars bill we flagged it. You want us to try to lower it. So we're always behind the scenes looking out for you automatically. You're not taking a picture of your bill and sending it over to us. So I remember, I got this service called the health Flock that I'm paying for. Let me go ahead and send it in. Now, this is all automated and it's all there leveraging technology, so you can have your peace of mind. Dot Com now when you go there, give a master card. MasterCard just did a press release and we're now available to all sixty million MasterCard holders in the United States and you can go in. You get a freedom only ninety day trial, but you get fraud remediation protection and remediation for life. So if there's a bill like this balance bill, or some a billion company stole your information and used it to create bills and that ended up on your medical record, or a bill was produced that went unpaid because renewed existed and that ended up on your credit report, health doc takes care and resolves all that for you.
Yeah, and as a.
Master Card cardholder, you get that benefit for life. So it's been a very very exciting relationship with us and a way for us to be able to now tell the masses. It's a solution out there for a very complex problem and it's really simple and easy.
Yeah, you just go literally, I'm on the website and if you are a master cardholder, you just put in and get it and you get that on and so if you have a master Card in your wallet, this is this is where to go. Right now, you already have.
Healthlock searching for credit cards. This did help, This could help the discussion on that one.
The master Card partner with health loc is they saw that there just isn't a really pervasive, ubiquitous healthcare service offering, and when they saw ours, they were just like, this is fantastic. They spent a year vetting us for security, all of our analytics, and then of course came out with work we're going with health flock, and now we're offering it to their sixty million cardiolders the United States, So it's very exciting for us.
Peripheral question, do you have to have traditional medical insurance or would healthlock work with like a medical sharing plan?
Yeah? Great, great question. So I've got a very good friend Gary who has a health share and he, you know, just normally waits for the health share to go ahead and either you know, tell him that it's okay to pay or he's responsible for those first dollars out and signed up for healthlock, and in his particular case of a health share, he did have to take a picture and submit it. We have that in our app. So if there's no carrier connection, we have almost three hundred carrier connections and there's about three hundred and ten I think total carriers, so we can automate the health shares. We're working on that automation. But you could say, did you hear that yeah, lightning. Oh wow, it's okay, there's just tornado warnings here. So for the health share or if you don't have insurance, you know, the people who don't have insurance are the most vulnerable. They've got no no coverage at all. So in that case, sign up for health falk. You can't automatically connect in because you don't have insurance or have else share, but you can still take a picture that invoice, send it in to us and we'll do the same audit. And Gary saved thirty five hundred dollars and so that was really exciting and it really opened up the health share world to us that we think is very important.
Mm hmm. You know what else is opening up worlds.
And is super important and usually is done for us, which is my favorite. Yeah, the mill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
Well, we better her even get to the bill. The week because the lights are about to go out of there.
Yeah, all right, god, it really quickly. Every week we invite our guests and we yell at them and ask them to share their bill with us, and we can't wait to hear yours.
Well, So I was thinking about this, and there's a gal that's thirty six years old named Jessica, and she, you know, very healthy, really had never had a big occurrence, had a little bit of you know something on her head when the doctor said, the insurance is going to take care of it, and of course she got a thirty five, three thousand dollars balance bill and hell flock of course flagged it. And by the way, it wasn't just the fact that she got that bill. That's a big bill for her. So in her income bracket, three thousand dollars of unplanned expense was a big bill. And so her panic first time really experiencing the healthcare system. Obviously, now she's getting married and she's going to experience with kids the true healthcare system, but for her it was that first time. And so I can't tell you how happy she was because she had health walk and we resolved that issue for her because it was an unfair balance bill went to zero and she couldn't be more happy. So, Jessica's thirty six years old, you know, just starting a family health doc obviously provided that benefit for her. As you go into more care, unfortunately, you are going to get that magical word bill and health DOOC can help you with aull your bills.
That's beautiful, that's great, just really helping people and then plugging healthlock. I mean, well done, Scott, well done. If you all, if you all listening, have a bill that you want to submit, If you're like Jessica who didn't end up needing to pay her medical bill anymore because of resources available to her, or your name is Bill and you're just out here living life, call Local Friends podcast dot com slash Bill, leave us your bill, and now it's time for the lightning around.
Pow boy with perfect lightning happening.
I know we should have just waited for the lightning in the background.
Oh it's gone, it's coming, all right.
So Scott, this is our vulnerability round and we want to know. We're all going to answer have you been over billed? And what ye was it? Or what did you do about it?
Yeah? Sorry, of course we get that. We had the twins with the sonograms where we got balance build every time. As you know, you know, I'm only thirty five, but I look fifty, so of course, you know, I've always got something happening, and I'm extically fifty, you know. So I actually went in for a dental appointment. Dentists are wonderful people, and you don't get much benefit. And there's something big, which is your dentist not submitting the bill the claim to your insurance, your dental insurance, because they want maximum dollars. They don't want, you know, five hundred dollars for that crown, they want fifteen hundred dollars for that crown. And so it was, oh, you know, here's your bill, and we're like, wow, you know, hell Fox said this. This doesn't look right because it's the same price as the bill. Oh, we forgot to submit it to insurance. So that was my latest was a dental bill.
Actually wow we forgot Yeah for good wow, yep.
Man.
Jill. So I am the person who calls ahead of time. Thankfully, I have not yet had an experience of an emergency in my adulthood, at least, or I've been surprised by a bill. I am very very diligent to shop around, get good faith estimates and make sure that the bills are in line with the good faith estimate. But that did happen to me recently where I was quoted something astronomical. I had to have a procedure done that required anesthesia that was going to be done in the hospital, and the hospital just for the hospital component. Because through this process I learned the hospital bills separate from anesthesia bill, separate from surgeon, and none of them know what each other's going to bill. They're all totally on different islands, so three different places you have to call, and just the hospital just to rent their room for an hour was going to try and charge me thirty three thousand dollars and that just sounded like way too much for a fifteen minute procedure. So I ended up being able to shop around and find a place that would only charge twenty five hundred dollars for the hour to rent. That that's my story of how I handled the possible over bill or what I would have deemed too large a bill.
Yeah, it's so worth it to call it is. This is one of those things where it is worth it. If you don't have time to call and negotiate your phone, your internet, your insurance, this is this is worth the money.
I think of the time, it was shocking to be and you pointed this out already, Scott. How how much of a disparity there can be even within a geographic location on pricing. I mean these these places were ten miles away from each other. One wanted thirty three thousand, another wanted twenty five hundred. So yeah, I mean you can shop around. It's not just one price everywhere.
Yeah, Unfortunately, Jill, that's just common. It is in you know, there's sometimes there's good reasons for that and sometimes there aren't. And that's the quality choice. Right, So we're talking about price. You may have wanted debt thirty three thousand. Maybe it was open heart surgery you're going to have, and it's like, you know, I'll pay for that, right.
Open heart searcher.
Out and I want Tom.
In and out with AI these days?
Right? Yeah?
Yeah, for me, I was Bill, Well, my son was billed accidentally for a test they were testing for RSV, not for flu. We already knew he did not have flu, but when they were running the test. They accidentally ran both because it's just like common. So when they gave me the results of the tests that were negative, they said, oh and we all so we also tested for flu. Uh, We're not going to make you pay for it. That was an accident on their part. So I get the bill, and the bill the test for the flu test is on there, so I just like go and I'm in the office for a visit and billing is right there, so it was really easy. She just came out and was I was like, hey, they told me that they weren't going to bill for this, that it was the test was an accident, and she's like okay, So she took it off and I didn't have to pay for it. So that one was very easy. But it came because I paid attention to the itemized bill because instead of just paying it, so like Scott, when you say don't pay up front or don't pay without like taking a look at stuff, like, don't do it. When we we had to get tubes in Alice's ears, they wanted me to pay a thousand dollars up front and I'm like no, and she's like, oh, okay, how much can you pay? And I was like, I will pay five hundred because I that's that's what I want to pay. And they were and they there was nothing they could do, so that's all I paid. So you have, especially with a system that this this flippy floppy with pricing.
Yeahpy flippy flappy. That's our take on medical yea in the United States.
Oh my gosh, Scott, thank you so much for coming on before the tornado comes for you. Can you tell us where where to get more information on healthlock.
Yeah again healthalk dot com. Obviously we're on all the social media as well, but health doc dot com really has has got videos on there, people with their testimonials. It's got some, you know, easy to understand videos of how the process works and privacy control and savings. The The onboarding takes us a few minutes and uh, hey, let's go see if we can find you some lost money.
Yes.
Perfect, Thanks so much, Scott.
Thank you guys, really appreciate it. Thanks Jael, Thanks Jen.
All right, sweet, thank you so much. That was really great. And after we got off of recording with Scott, he also said, because I had mention like this and like identity theft, like if your identity gets stolen, like reclaiming it will take you days of your life, just like negotiating over billing days of your life. Those are the two resources that really might be worth your money to pay for services that do that for you. And he said that, and I didn't know this. Healthoc actually has a you can add on to it. Their premium service thirty bucks a month, and it includes financial theft protection like that, which is cheaper than all the other places that do that for you. And I think MasterCard users get a free ninety day trial of that premium service, so double check they get a ninety day free of some kind of premium offer in addition to the general free service that all MasterCard users get.
There's not a lot of subscriptions that I'm out here think and we should all be having, but ones that save you thousands of dollars. Yeah, and hours of time with very real potential risks. Yeah, it is some peace of mind for sure. Yeah. We're not even we're not sponsored them.
After we got off the call, we're like, should we be having them give us money?
Like because they're not. And I was like, should we ask? We're not very good at that, We're not, So you just truly believe in bringing you products and services that are gonna be helpful to you. And this one we do genuinely believe in, which we think helps bring you more authentic content. We just are gonna have to figure out how to.
Get we can. Yeah, well this this book is available for pre orders. So and so we're gonna we're gonna really need some people to show up. Thank you so much for listening.
Yes, and we love reading your reviews. That is a way that you can support us. Again, not monetarily, just like right us. We're gonna even.
Pay some bills eventually.
That helps. But we like this one from Canadian les LETTI you will not be bored saving money. Sounds boring, right, Not true. The Frugal Friends podcast turns financial responsibility into something that is fun. So often I am trying to find podcasts about personal finance and can't bear to make myself listen to the whole thing as it's so boring. The Frugal Friends podcast is so fun and makes me laugh all while learning new ways to be a better steward of my money. And I feel like I have two new friends. Thanks guys for everything. Oh my gosh.
Kadians Canadian los LETTI. We are your friends. Thank you.
I'm so glad that we're not boring you, that you're listening and leaving reviews. If you also feel not bored and do you enjoy listening, leave us, leave us a review. It does help us and it doesn't cost you money.
Yes, we'll see you next time. By Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
Jen. This has nothing to do with the podcast episode Fantastic. So I went on a deep cleaning ram page recently, typical as one does and normal. One of the things that I decided to clean because I haven't in a couple of years, is the very thick mattress pad that we have because when we first bought a mattress, I found it to be not very comfy, and rather than getting a totally new mattress, I got a thick mattress pad to put on top of it. But it cannot fit in our washing machine. So I finally decided, even though it's quite cumbersome and annoying and time consuming to do, to take it to the laundrymat to wash it. So we did that and then Eric put it in that he was responsible for like finishing up drying it and bringing it back home. So he did that and thought it was just damp, so he brought it home, thinking, I don't need to put it into the dryer at the laundry maat one more time. It's just a little damp. We'll let it dry out at home. So we did. We laid it all out, and by the time we're ready for bed, still not quite dry. So then we're like, well, maybe we could shove it into our dryer for just like a couple of minutes, because while it couldn't fit into our washing machine, it could fit into our dryer. So we do that, and then I start to smell something. No, yeah, it was still too bulky, and there is a heating element in our dryer. Our dryer's pretty old, so it got too shoved and pressed up against the heating element that it started to burn it. I quickly removed it. It was only in for about five minutes. And now me wanting everything to be clean and nice and take care of my stuff because that's the good thing to do and that's the way we do things. Now leans me with this like scrunched up spot because like it kind of melted the fibers.
Where it is the spot it's it's.
On my side of the bed, but kind of like lower and off to the left, like my left thigh would potentially be touching it. But I did put the sheets back on, and I can't notice it. It's not perceivable to my body. But man, was that frustrating because here I am trying to wash something make it last longer, and I kind of ruined it but didn't ruin it enough to have to buy something new, and thankfully I can just cover it up with a sheet. But I just changed my sheets again recently, and it's this like reminder of my effort to take care of things and it not going well, but not giving myself permission to just replace it because it doesn't actually need to be replaced, and it's a decent practice for me. I don't love it, but this like living and imperfection and being content with my failures and living with them. It's like this deep rooted metaphor for wow, every time I change my sheets, and it really does bother mood, but we're going to live with it.
Everything in your house is so pristine and sterile. I'm so now you know it's not.
I've got a dirty little secret. And it looks dirty. It looks like this brown smudge used fibers.
I love it.
I'm so sorry. Are you sorry or do you love it? You are beaming over here?
Do you hate it for you?
Ah? Wow