How to spot, avoid Medicare open-enrollment scams

The open enrollment period for Medicare — an active time for scammers seeking to take advantage of senior citizens — began Oct. 15 and continues until Dec. 7.  This is the only time during the year that people enrolled in Medicare can change their Medicare health plans, their supplemental insurance plans (Medigap) and their prescription drug plans.

By now, people already enrolled in Medicare should have received an Annual Notice of Change from their health insurance providers.  These notices describe any changes to their plans such as the dropping of particular drugs from their prescription drug plan, premium changes and deductibles.  If you are satisfied with your plans, you do not need to do anything.

Scammers and identity thieves view the open enrollment period as senior citizen hunting season. Myriads of Medicare scams are common during this time.  Among the most common scams are phone calls or emails purporting to be from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) informing you that Medicare is issuing new Medicare cards. and that In order for you to continue receiving benefits, the scam goes, you need to obtain a new card, And to do this, you must provide  your Medicare number, which is the same as your Social Security number.  This is a total scam and if you provide your Medicare/ Social Security number to the scammer, you will end up becoming a victim of identity theft.

What makes this fraud particularly troublesome is that there is a small kernel of truth to it. For many years Medicare resisted changing the Medicare Identification number from being a person’s Social Security number, although almost uniformly governmental agencies such as state registries of motor vehicles and others had made this important change to protect people from identity theft.  Under federal legislation finally passed last year, Medicare will be required to stop using Social Security numbers as their Medicare identification numbers.

However, the law provided for Medicare to take up to four years to switch over to issuing new identifying numbers for people applying for Medicare and, more importantly, up to eight years to change the identifying numbers of people already receiving Medicare benefits.

Medicare is not issuing new cards to present recipients, and Medicare will never call nor email and ask for your Medicare number.  Never give your Medicare number to anyone who calling you purporting to be from Medicare.    Even if your caller ID shows the call is coming from Medicare, it may be a misidentification trick through technique called spoofing.

Also complicating the situation is that the open enrollment season for Medicare overlaps with open enrollment for the state-based health insurance marketplaces that are a part of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  Some scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists, will try and convince Medicare recipients to sign up for a purported plan through the health insurance marketplaces, however, the Affordable Care Act only applies to people who are not otherwise covered by health insurance.

Anyone eligible for and receiving coverage through Medicare will have no need for an insurance policy through the Affordable Care Act.  In fact, it is illegal for someone to attempt to sell you coverage through the Affordable Care Act if you are already covered by Medicare.

You also may be contacted by someone purporting to be from your insurance company asking you to verify information.  Again, this is a common tactic of identity thieves trying to trick you into providing information.  Your real insurance company will not be calling you to verify information, however, if you have the slightest concern that the call might be legitimate, you should merely hang up and call your real insurance company at the customer service number that appears on the back of your insurance card to confirm that the initial call was a scam.

Yet another scam frequently occurring during the Medicare open enrollment period is when scammers try to sell you bogus supplemental insurance policies.  Supplemental insurance policies, often referred to as Medigap policies legitimately cover the copayments and deductibles which you are otherwise responsible for when you are covered by Medicare.

However, although there are many legitimate Medigap policies from which to choose, there are a lot of scammers misleading people into purchasing inappropriate policies.   Once again, you cannot be sure that someone contacting you by phone, text message, email or even regular mail to sell you a Medigap policy is legitimate.

Finally, be particularly wary of people calling you offering free medical supplies or free checkups in return for your merely providing your Medicare Identification number.

For information you can rely on about Medigap policies including side by side comparisons of the policies available in your area, go the official Medicare website.  Of course, it's also a great resource for information on Medicare in general. If you'd rather talk to somebody, the agency's phone umber is 1-800-MEDICARE.

Steve Weisman, an expert in preventing cyberscams and identity theft, is a lawyer and professor at Bentley University. He writes the blog scamicide.com, where he provides daily update information about the latest scams. His new book is Identity Theft Alert.