4 Types of Medicare Scams to Avoid

Iowa officials want financial professionals to help them keep an eye out for Medicare fraud.

The state’s insurance division has put out a description of four common types of Medicare scams.

The scammers involved perpetrate the scams by calling the victims on the telephone or sending email, even though Medicare employees rarely make unsolicited calls to enrollees or send enrollees unsolicited email.

Three of the scams listed involve fake assertions, such as a statement that:

• The Medicare program is issuing new cards.
• Medicare enrollees need to provide identifying information, such as financial account numbers, to get new plastic or metallic Medicare cards, or black-and-white COVID-19-era Medicare cards.
• Medicare is replacing an enrollee’s card to protect the enrollee, due to suspicious activity alerts.

A fourth type of Medicare fraud is “spoofing,” or adjusting telephone caller ID information to make a scammer look a friend of the target, or like someone who lives in the target’s area.

Iowa officials will be discussing Medicare fraud trends at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Daily Time April 23, at a live event that will be streamed over the web.