Warn Parents: Medicare Open Enrollment Scam Looming
This is open enrollment season, a time of year when just about anyone can make changes to their health insurance without the restrictions that you will face during the rest of the year. And while you can be confident in the process of making changes to your own healthcare, do you know who is particularly at risk of fraud at this time of year? Your parents.
The FTC told CNBC that it received 2.4 million allegations of fraud and identity theft in the first nine months of this year alone, including nearly 332,000 complaints against impostors claiming to be from government agencies. The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network reports that Health & Human Services and Medicare are the second most reported fraud categories (social security fraud tops the list).
The most common way to contact government scammers is by telephone. Here are some tips on how to spot a bad actor.
How to recognize a Medicare fraudster
These scammers are not doing anything new, but tend to step up their game when everyone is thinking about the open enrollment period. Here are some tactics they can use:
- Someone calls, claiming to be Medicare, and asks for your Social Security number – even the last four digits – or bank information to be able to provide a new Medicare card.
- Someone calls with free medical equipment or services and asks for your Medicare number.
- Someone calls, claiming they have information about new rules or unspecified “updates” about Medicare.
“There have been more calls lately from organizations claiming that a Medicare recipient’s doctor has recommended a free neck or back brace or even a genetic DNA test,” said Amy Nofziger, director of fraud victim support at AARP. … “An unsuspecting victim provides the perpetrator with personal information, such as a Medicare number, which in turn charges Medicare tens of thousands of dollars for fake medical examinations and supplies.”
Nofziger recommends not answering phone calls at all unless you know who is calling. Instead, let it go to voicemail and then decide how to respond, if at all. It’s easy to get flustered during a phone call, and you can be sure the impostors know how to push your buttons to get what they want.
Speaking of answering a phone call, the FTC is warning consumers not to trust the caller ID when the phone rings. As you may well know by now, scammers can look up phone numbers and caller ID screens to say just about anything.
Nofziger advised that if you answer the phone and the caller claims they work for a government agency, do not call anyone information about your Medicare coverage. She added that you should talk to your doctor before using any medical product – don’t trust whoever calls you on the phone about medical problems that you may not even have.
How to file a fraud complaint
The FTC asks you to file a complaint if you suspect a fraudster called you. There’s a phone number for that (1-877-382-4357), but the FTC also has an online Complaints Assistant. For Medicare-related fraud, you can select Cheating and Fraud in the column on the left and follow the prompts to indicate that someone posing as a government agency called you. This is what this site looks like:
Although the FTC does not respond to individual complaints, the information you provide can help the agency pursue a case against known fraudsters.
In addition, AARP offers a hotline (877-908-3360) to report suspicious calls if you believe you have been targeted by a scammer.