15 Jul Protect Your Information

Your phone rings from an unidentified caller, but you answer anyway. A voice on the other end offers to help you to navigate Obamacare changes, update your Medicare card, or offer to sell you insurance that would make you compliant under the new health reform law.

It sounds like it could be a phone call from the federally-funded healthcare reform navigators, enlisted by state governments to educate the public about the health insurance exchanges that will debut on October 1. But chances are it’s a scam.

Since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, scammers have taken advantage of the upcoming changes by posing as representatives of Medicare or insurance companies, tricking trusting consumers into offering their social security number, bank account routing numbers, and other private information.

With the health insurance exchanges, a major hallmark of the healthcare reform law, less than 80 days away from opening, scams are on the rise again. The Federal Trade Commission says it received 1,100 complaints about healthcare-related scams in May alone.

“This is the huge, new government program. There’s no doubt in my mind that the fraudsters view it as an opportunity to rip people off,” Lois Greisman, associate director for the Federal Trade Commission’s division of marketing practices, told the McClatchy Washington News Bureau.

A widely reported scam involves fake Medicare representatives calling seniors, who are more likely to answer the phone, asking for personal information so that the senior’s Medicare coverage will not be disrupted or so that the senior will receive a rebate. The Affordable Care Act will not disrupt Medicare service, and the government does not permit rebates. Other premises for scams involve selling an “Obamacare card” (no such thing exists) or threats to throw people in jail unless they buy health insurance.

Click here to read the rest of the article over at MedicalDaily.com.