The interview is edited for clarity.
FRED FLETCHER-FIERRO: It's Morning Edition on KRPS. I'm Fred Fletcher Fierro. October marks the start of open enrollment for Medicare for millions of Americans. Pamela Hernandez, regional director of the Better Business Bureau in Springfield, Missouri, joins us this morning with information on the cons and scams that always pop up at this time of year. Good morning, Pam.
PAMELA HERNANDEZ: Good morning.
FRED: You know, it wouldn't be the start of fall without of course, open enrollment for health insurance next year for Medicaid, rather than Medicare, and the scams that always rotate around this year. I can almost, you know, put that in stone every October.
PAM: Unfortunately, we do. We have to talk about it every year. I feel like we need to talk about year-round because BBB frequently receives reports of scam calls of people pretending to be from Medicare. So it's an important conversation.
FRED: Well, you know, Pam, you walked right into what I was going to say next, because according to government data, there are nearly 70 million Americans on Medicare, which obviously is a huge market. And with it, scammers have cast a wide net. So what should somebody look out for if they're on Medicare and they're worried about possibly being scammed? Because it's, I'm going to be honest, it's kind of easy to do. This is kind of an easy target for scammers with so many people in the program.
PAM: You're absolutely right. I mean, with a phishing scam, you might cast a wide net, and there are a lot of folks who are on Medicare or, you know, healthcare.gov, the open exchange. So, really be wary of anyone who contacts you out of the blue about those programs. Now, there are people out there who can give you legitimate help, but they are not out there making cold calls. They're not calling you that way. They're not asking you for your Medicare number or social security number, anything like that. And they're certainly not gonna charge you for the support and information.
FRED: Well, something you didn't mention, maybe I missed it, is that, Pam, I get things through the mail commonly. You know, they look like official mailings from the government trying to make it look all legit. We need to open this now. Will they contact you through the mail or no?
PAM: You know, government impostors of all sorts are real. We get a lot of reports about those as well. Here's the thing. Sometimes, legitimate government agencies will contact you through the mail. This is a little off topic, but for example, the IRS. Sometimes companies will send out mass flyers trying to get you to something, but they're not going to tell you that you have to contact us now, there's some sort of problem.
Just really be with anything that is trying to get you to act without thinking, or they're offering you some sort of free gift. If they're giving you a free gift, they're going to want something in exchange. may not be money, but they're trying to get your Medicare ID or additional personal information. So just be really cautious of anybody contacting you out of the blue, contacting you before you contact them, and offering things that sound just a little too good to be true.
FRED: So you mean the U.S. government will not send me that heart rate monitor? That's not the U.S. government.
PAM: You know, I don't know. No, it is not. It is not. I mean, I'm not going to say that there's not some program somewhere. I don't know. I'm not a government program expert, but if some company wants to send you a free gift and they start asking you a bunch of questions, that is a red flag.
FRED: Well, yeah, I mean, I want to bring that up. I'm 47. I'm in the AARP now. I'm getting these. I'm not on Medicare, but I see these kinds of things kind of float through my mailbox because that'll be the only mail I get. sometimes. So I'm exposed to that.
So I just want to let listeners know out there, once again, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. You know what mail from the government looks like. You know what they're going to ask for. You know they're not going to solicit you directly, or they shouldn't. You know the US government does not communicate via text, although maybe you don't. Maybe they do these days. So you've got to be careful who you do. Go ahead.
PAM: Yeah, I was going to say, the government's not going to text you. So if you get a text that says it's from Medicare, that's definitely, that's going to be a scam. You know, you might get some sort of spam text from a broker, but again, if somebody reaches out to you out of the blue like that, that's a red flag that things just aren't quite what they seem.
FRED: So that text from RFK the other day, I got with his picture on it, that was not a real text from the Department of Health and Human Services.
PAM: To the best of my knowledge, that is correct. Yes.
FRED: I know I'm just joshing you. But these are the kind of ridiculous things that we may see out in society, trying to get the attention of somebody in Medicare. So let's look at it another way. You say that you are, you do fall for one of these scams, whether somebody calls you, gives them your personal information, a text, maybe you go to a government website that it's an imposter, but it looks just like a government website. If we're caught there and we're embarrassed about it, what kind of resource, or rather recourse, do we have? How can we get ourselves out of it?
PAM: Well, no one should be embarrassed about it. I mean, these folks, these scammers, if that's what you get involved in, they're criminals. So nobody should be embarrassed about that. You want to protect yourself. So, for example, with Medicare, you want to contact Medicare. So you can go to medicare.gov. You can call 1-800-Medicare and report what is happening.
And then, of course, we always ask that you report things to BBB as well. We have at BBB scam tracker, our scam survival toolkit, which can provide you with more of a step-by-step plan, but just simply sharing what happened so that we can share with others and try to prevent that from happening to other people.
FRED: Yes, either reach out to the Better Business Bureau in Pam's office in Springfield, or I suppose you could reach out to the government also. Would you recommend that still? Because I don't know, it's kind of a gray area for me.
PAM: Well, if... If someone has like, for example, you gave away your Medicare ID, you're going to want to let Medicare know that. You're going to want that information communicated to Medicare. So same thing with if you give your Social Security number out, you're going to want to notify Social Security about potential identity theft. You're going to want to potentially contact the IRS.
So anytime you give away that kind of information, the agency needs to know so they can make changes, put flags on the account. They need to be, and that needs to be communicated to them.
FRED: Well, I will admit before we go that you and I could spend an hour easily on this topic. There is so much to get to because there are so many details, and each person has their personal story about Medicare and the pitfalls, the highs and lows of it. So where should we leave the conversation today?
PAM: You know, just if you have questions, if you're not sure what you're seeing as a scam, bbb.org slash scam tracker. Look for information there. You can find some helpful prevention tips as well. Just take a pause and do a little more research.
FRED: Regional Director of the Better Business Bureau in Springfield, Missouri, Pamela Hernandez.
PAM: Oh, thanks.
FRED: It's Morning Edition on KRPS. I'm Fred Fletcher Fierro.
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