Paid to be first
A sponsored link can outrank Medicare and take your number
WHAT CHANGED?
Medicare's Open Enrollment opens in ten days, on October 15. The Federal Trade Commission has just published a plain warning about what you will run into when you go looking for it: the first thing on your screen may not be Medicare at all. It may be a business that paid to sit above it.
Start with the reassuring part, because it is very nearly the whole answer. The real tool is free, and reaching it takes one line of typing. Medicare's own plan finder is at medicare.gov/plan-compare. Type that address into your browser yourself and the problem does not arise.
What the FTC describes is a convincing copy: web addresses built to resemble Medicare.gov, official-looking logos, and sponsored placement bought at the top of the results page, directly above the genuine link, where most of us click without looking twice.
WHO IS AFFECTED?
Anyone who will review, switch, or drop a Medicare Advantage or Part D plan during the October 15 to December 7 window. New coverage starts January 1, and your plan must have the request by December 7.
Anyone who finds a website by searching for its name rather than typing its address. That is most people, most of the time, and the paid placement is built for precisely that habit.
Not a concern if you are keeping your current plan and never go looking. Your coverage carries on by itself, and nobody needs to contact you about it.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Two separate things can go wrong here, and it helps to keep them apart. One is your money: you believe you have enrolled in coverage and find out at a pharmacy counter that you have not. The other is your Medicare number sitting in a stranger's hands, which is medical identity theft, and that one takes months to unwind rather than days.
The scale is not small. The FTC's own figures on impersonation scams show reports from older adults of losses of $10,000 or more rising from 1,790 in 2020 to 8,269 in 2024, more than four times as many in four years. Reports of losses above $100,000 grew nearly sevenfold over the same period.
And here is the distinction I would want my own mother to hold on to. Medicare does not come to you. In its own words, Medicare will never call you to sell you anything, and will never turn up at your home. So anyone who opens the conversation, whether by call, text, or knock at the door, is not Medicare, however official the caller ID sounds or the web page looks.
WHAT TO DO
Type the address rather than searching for it. Open Medicare's official plan finder, enter your prescriptions and your pharmacy, and compare what your current plan will cost you next year against the alternatives. That is the same comparison the paid links promise to do on your behalf, done at the source instead, and for nothing.
If you would rather speak to a person, every state has free counselors who are not paid to sell you a plan, through the State Health Insurance Assistance Program. And 1-800-MEDICARE, 800-633-4227, is the number to call if you think you have already handed your Medicare number to the wrong website.
If the worst has already happened and you are not sure what to do in the next hour, The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit is our own $29 guide to exactly that: which calls to make first, which reports actually freeze something, and how to lock down what is left. It carries the printable contact sheet most people wish they had before they needed it.
SOURCE: the FTC's warning on avoiding health insurance scams at Open Enrollment
Written by Ellen Marsh
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