Are all the "Medicare" phone calls spam and scam?
I routinely hang up on any caller who says “I’m with Medicare benefits” or something similar. Are any of these calls genuine? Does Medicare do this, and should I listen? It’s re-enrollment time so they are trying to sell you Medicare supplement policies or Medicare advantage policies. At least some of them are genuine sales calls, not scams, but I still would not take their calls. Medicare itself does not call. If you have questions about re-enrolling for your Part D drug coverage, you should find a financial planner who can advise you.
Pretty much anything calling you from Medicare is a SCAM, it never fails to be the case! If you don’t initiate the call, you have NO way of knowing who is actually calling you. I signed up at mymedicare.gov for electronic notification. IF they need to contact me, they will send me a notification so I can call them. From Oct 15 through Dec 07 is the annual enrollment period & there are a TON of companies trying to grab your business. They might not be a SCAM; however, they are most likely SPAM!!! I’ve been on Medicare since 2008 & they’ve NEVER initiated a call to me. The one time that I called them & the girl didn’t know the answer, she gave me her name & the name of the person who would be calling me back. Lots of insurance companies are trying to sign up new accounts for a Medicare Advantage plan. Want more true and accurate information? Contact your state Dept. of Health and Welfare and ask them about it.
In the back of your (If you have one) “Medicare & You 2023” book there are numbers you can call. They are not ALL spam and scam! I just tell them I’m 17 and that kinda shuts them down right now.
Sometimes they already have the info but Agents are required to verify that the person they are talking to is who they say they are. In this case, your mom. They need to make sure they aren't giving personal information to the wrong person because HIPAA. The keep calling because they want her to switch plans ideally, any agent worth their salt wont put someone in a plan that isn't a good fit for them but it does happen unfortunately. AEP is 10/15-12/7 every year. That the time to pick your plan for the following year, or determine if you're going to stay in the plan you currently have. OEP is 01/01-03/31 every year. That is your 1 chance to either switch to a different Part C plan or go back to Original Medicare for the year. In between those times, thats strictly special election period time. You can find the SEPs on Medicare.gov
You can also ask for their license number. That's easily verified too using the same method as the NPN. Any agent worth their weight in cold will have no problem with providing the information to you. And any agent worth the weight in gold will also have no problem at least trying to answer the questions you are asking. They are a lot of regulations when it comes to Medicare as to what agents are allowed to say and aren't, and then add in the rules from whatever brokerage they are with and it gets real tricky real quick.
I've gotten these before and they start off with "As a valued medicare client you're entitled to a free $100 gift card, please hold on so we can verify your information and get it sent to you immediately!"
One of the ways that helped me with some of these scam callers was to answer the phone call and put them on mute right away. After you put them on mute let them hang up because (from what I've heard) they think the number that they've called is a dead number and wouldn't call that number again. They'll most likely to stop calling you. In time you'll see a lot less calls from some of these scammers if you want them to stop calling you. I hope this will help you. So far this works with me.
Maybe a little off topic but I've been getting a new kind of scam call lately. These people will call up asking if you have medicare/medicaid claiming to be from the "Medicare Upgrade Department". It's pretty infuriating how these people are targeting the elderly, and as someone who has had an elderly relative fall for scams like this before nothing brings me more joy than keeping these idiots on the phone for as long as possible so they aren't off scamming some poor grandma. Anyways, I keep getting these guys calling trying to get medicaid information but I can't figure out how the scam works or what they do with that information. I don't medicare/medicaid so I've sort of had to make it up as I go (they ask what color the card is and seem to be happy with "red white and blue" as a response, but I have no idea really). Then they play some kind of recorded message and ask you to respond "yes" to it. They seemed to get pretty angry when I avoided doing this, so that's definitely an important part of the scam. In any case, make sure if you have elderly relatives that they know not to give out information to anyone claiming to be from the "Medicare Upgrade Department".
I don't know if this is answered before, but what its for is they get your info and then they can do stuff in your name like take out loans and buy stuff. The most important part is the YES part since this allows them to edit your voice inside of the conversation which can be used as proof of an oral agreement. They for example edit it with, are you sure that you want to take out the 50k loan and are you aware that you cannot cancel? YES. This is enough to hold up in court
Work in the Medicare domain. It's to gather Medicare information from beneficiaries so the government can be billed for false claims/services that were unneeded, unrequested, and often unprovided. Once that information is provided, it can get passed around between illegitimate entities and affect beneficiaries. such as the coverage gap in terms of prescriptions.
Interesting, it sounds like that might be what this is. You would think something like that would leave a robust paper trail, I guess they are banking on no one noticing or bothering to investigate the extra charges? I mean it’s not like you can just bill Medicaid to some PayPal account right?
Yes I know but this is one of the many many many scams there are, most of which you probably haven't heard of or knew of their existence. Something like this could also be used for example to transfer funds from your account or confirm a check which then can be cashed out by the scammer and they can just get away with it in court. I don't know the exact scam they are using and that is because there are a lot of variants of this. They for example could also set you up for buying something or whatever, possibilities are endless. They might also use it to open a bank account or credit card in your name, I'm not sure if these are all possible but thats the kind of stuff they look for when abusing this law. The possibilities are really endless if they know what they are doing, which they most likely will.
Possibly they want to use this information for ID-theft purposes not directly related to Medicare. But scamming Medicare directly is also a thing. A doctor or therapist (fake or real) could use Medicare info to bill the government in the name of real Medicare clients for services not actually rendered. That's why it's important for people on Medicare to check their records to make sure all services billed for them are legit. (Just like you'd check your regular health insurance Explanation of Benefits).
Open enrollment has begun for Medicare and scammers are blowing up the phones pretending to be with Medicare. I've had 4 calls, all from spoofed numbers beginning with my local area code, in just a few hours. I answered a few just to see what they had to say. They are very slick at pretending to be legit. If you have any relatives or friends who have Medicare, please warn them not to believe ANY phone call from someone claiming to offer Medicare plans or benefits! Make your friends/family aware that spoofed numbers are not real and to just hang up. If someone has fallen for it, they can call Medicare at 1-800-MEDICARE to ask for assistance in protecting their ID.
I did! Then I pretended my phone was dying so I could get a phone number to call them back (so I can actually report it), but he literally told me they have no phone number. Then he tried to pretend I was asking for his personal number. Sadly many elderly people have no idea there are phone scammers and might fall for it. So if you know anyone, let them know never to believe these callers. The most evil thing about it all is that they bought a legitimate hospital's phone number, so former patients trying to call in to make an appointment or with billing questions are the newest victims of this low-effort nonsense. Your Medicare number USED to be your SSN..that changed in 2017 (I believe). It is now just a random sequence of numbers and letters. In order to determine who that number belongs to, other information is needed (name dob)
That is why they are asking for other information. As long as she is making sure the person she is talking to is legitimate, she is taking the right precautions to safe guard her information.
Some companies do use offshore lead companies or even off shore qualifiers. Those are usually the people that are calling and it sounds like a telemarketing call. Ideally, if she doesn't trust that person she can ask to be transferred to an Agent and then verify the Agents NPN.
Pretty much anything calling you from Medicare is a SCAM, it never fails to be the case! If you don’t initiate the call, you have NO way of knowing who is actually calling you. I signed up at mymedicare.gov for electronic notification. IF they need to contact me, they will send me a notification so I can call them. From Oct 15 through Dec 07 is the annual enrollment period & there are a TON of companies trying to grab your business. They might not be a SCAM; however, they are most likely SPAM!!! I’ve been on Medicare since 2008 & they’ve NEVER initiated a call to me. The one time that I called them & the girl didn’t know the answer, she gave me her name & the name of the person who would be calling me back. Lots of insurance companies are trying to sign up new accounts for a Medicare Advantage plan. Want more true and accurate information? Contact your state Dept. of Health and Welfare and ask them about it.
In the back of your (If you have one) “Medicare & You 2023” book there are numbers you can call. They are not ALL spam and scam! I just tell them I’m 17 and that kinda shuts them down right now.
Sometimes they already have the info but Agents are required to verify that the person they are talking to is who they say they are. In this case, your mom. They need to make sure they aren't giving personal information to the wrong person because HIPAA. The keep calling because they want her to switch plans ideally, any agent worth their salt wont put someone in a plan that isn't a good fit for them but it does happen unfortunately. AEP is 10/15-12/7 every year. That the time to pick your plan for the following year, or determine if you're going to stay in the plan you currently have. OEP is 01/01-03/31 every year. That is your 1 chance to either switch to a different Part C plan or go back to Original Medicare for the year. In between those times, thats strictly special election period time. You can find the SEPs on Medicare.gov
You can also ask for their license number. That's easily verified too using the same method as the NPN. Any agent worth their weight in cold will have no problem with providing the information to you. And any agent worth the weight in gold will also have no problem at least trying to answer the questions you are asking. They are a lot of regulations when it comes to Medicare as to what agents are allowed to say and aren't, and then add in the rules from whatever brokerage they are with and it gets real tricky real quick.
I've gotten these before and they start off with "As a valued medicare client you're entitled to a free $100 gift card, please hold on so we can verify your information and get it sent to you immediately!"
One of the ways that helped me with some of these scam callers was to answer the phone call and put them on mute right away. After you put them on mute let them hang up because (from what I've heard) they think the number that they've called is a dead number and wouldn't call that number again. They'll most likely to stop calling you. In time you'll see a lot less calls from some of these scammers if you want them to stop calling you. I hope this will help you. So far this works with me.
Maybe a little off topic but I've been getting a new kind of scam call lately. These people will call up asking if you have medicare/medicaid claiming to be from the "Medicare Upgrade Department". It's pretty infuriating how these people are targeting the elderly, and as someone who has had an elderly relative fall for scams like this before nothing brings me more joy than keeping these idiots on the phone for as long as possible so they aren't off scamming some poor grandma. Anyways, I keep getting these guys calling trying to get medicaid information but I can't figure out how the scam works or what they do with that information. I don't medicare/medicaid so I've sort of had to make it up as I go (they ask what color the card is and seem to be happy with "red white and blue" as a response, but I have no idea really). Then they play some kind of recorded message and ask you to respond "yes" to it. They seemed to get pretty angry when I avoided doing this, so that's definitely an important part of the scam. In any case, make sure if you have elderly relatives that they know not to give out information to anyone claiming to be from the "Medicare Upgrade Department".
I don't know if this is answered before, but what its for is they get your info and then they can do stuff in your name like take out loans and buy stuff. The most important part is the YES part since this allows them to edit your voice inside of the conversation which can be used as proof of an oral agreement. They for example edit it with, are you sure that you want to take out the 50k loan and are you aware that you cannot cancel? YES. This is enough to hold up in court
Work in the Medicare domain. It's to gather Medicare information from beneficiaries so the government can be billed for false claims/services that were unneeded, unrequested, and often unprovided. Once that information is provided, it can get passed around between illegitimate entities and affect beneficiaries. such as the coverage gap in terms of prescriptions.
Interesting, it sounds like that might be what this is. You would think something like that would leave a robust paper trail, I guess they are banking on no one noticing or bothering to investigate the extra charges? I mean it’s not like you can just bill Medicaid to some PayPal account right?
Yes I know but this is one of the many many many scams there are, most of which you probably haven't heard of or knew of their existence. Something like this could also be used for example to transfer funds from your account or confirm a check which then can be cashed out by the scammer and they can just get away with it in court. I don't know the exact scam they are using and that is because there are a lot of variants of this. They for example could also set you up for buying something or whatever, possibilities are endless. They might also use it to open a bank account or credit card in your name, I'm not sure if these are all possible but thats the kind of stuff they look for when abusing this law. The possibilities are really endless if they know what they are doing, which they most likely will.
Possibly they want to use this information for ID-theft purposes not directly related to Medicare. But scamming Medicare directly is also a thing. A doctor or therapist (fake or real) could use Medicare info to bill the government in the name of real Medicare clients for services not actually rendered. That's why it's important for people on Medicare to check their records to make sure all services billed for them are legit. (Just like you'd check your regular health insurance Explanation of Benefits).
Open enrollment has begun for Medicare and scammers are blowing up the phones pretending to be with Medicare. I've had 4 calls, all from spoofed numbers beginning with my local area code, in just a few hours. I answered a few just to see what they had to say. They are very slick at pretending to be legit. If you have any relatives or friends who have Medicare, please warn them not to believe ANY phone call from someone claiming to offer Medicare plans or benefits! Make your friends/family aware that spoofed numbers are not real and to just hang up. If someone has fallen for it, they can call Medicare at 1-800-MEDICARE to ask for assistance in protecting their ID.
I did! Then I pretended my phone was dying so I could get a phone number to call them back (so I can actually report it), but he literally told me they have no phone number. Then he tried to pretend I was asking for his personal number. Sadly many elderly people have no idea there are phone scammers and might fall for it. So if you know anyone, let them know never to believe these callers. The most evil thing about it all is that they bought a legitimate hospital's phone number, so former patients trying to call in to make an appointment or with billing questions are the newest victims of this low-effort nonsense. Your Medicare number USED to be your SSN..that changed in 2017 (I believe). It is now just a random sequence of numbers and letters. In order to determine who that number belongs to, other information is needed (name dob)
That is why they are asking for other information. As long as she is making sure the person she is talking to is legitimate, she is taking the right precautions to safe guard her information.
Some companies do use offshore lead companies or even off shore qualifiers. Those are usually the people that are calling and it sounds like a telemarketing call. Ideally, if she doesn't trust that person she can ask to be transferred to an Agent and then verify the Agents NPN.
