How some rural hospitals were used to score huge paydays

As many Americans struggle to pay rising health insurance premiums, a CBS News investigation has uncovered a scheme that could make those premiums go even higher. It raises costs for insurers, who could then pass the increase along to you. Jorge Perez is CEO of Empower Group, a Miami-based healthcare company that claims to specialize in saving rural hospitals."We've gone to these towns and basically some of them we bought out of bankruptcy or they were just days before closing," Perez said.But one of the hospitals Perez promised to save in the Florida panhandle is now shut down and boarded up. We spoke to attorney Michelle Jordan who represents that hospital, Campbellton-Graceville, which was days away from closing when Perez and his partners swooped in. We asked if she wondered, what was in it for them? Perez's associates agreed to pay off the hospital's debt and manage it for a fee of $30,000 a month. Jordan begged the board not to sign, but she says they wanted to keep the hospital open. It did, thanks in part to deals Perez made with drug testing laboratories all over the country.To keep rural hospitals in business, insurance companies reimburse them for tests at much higher rates. A lab in Dallas might get $200 for a urine screen. The same test billed through a rural hospital could be more than $1,000. That explains why Perez struck deals with dozens of labs around the country to pass their testing through Campbellton-Graceville, and their billing along with it."I can tell you what was actually funneled through the facility, and that was over $120 million in about 14 months," Jordan said. "It sounds too good to be true."