Scammers are buying the top search result for Medicare
Typing the address yourself protects your number before December 7
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WHAT CHANGED?
Medicare's plan window opens Thursday, October 15, and until December 7 you can change your drug plan or your Medicare Advantage plan for 2027. Two weeks ago the Federal Trade Commission, with Medicare's own agency and the Senior Medicare Patrol, warned about something else that opens Thursday: the paid search results.
The trick is simpler than it sounds. Type a few words about Medicare plans into a search engine and the first result is often not Medicare. It is an advertisement somebody paid to put there, wearing a web address the agency describes as one that resembles government sites. Click one and you can end up with something that is not health insurance at all, or your Medicare number in a stranger's hands. The cure takes four seconds: scroll past the ads and open the official plan finder yourself.
WHO IS AFFECTED?
You have a Medicare drug plan or a Medicare Advantage plan. Between October 15 and December 7 you can join, switch or drop one, and what you hold on December 7 starts January 1 and runs all year.
You are doing any plan shopping this fall. This has nothing to do with your age or income, and everything to do with where your click lands.
You are helping a parent or spouse compare. Whoever does the searching is the one at risk.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Two things are at stake, and they are not the same size. The smaller one is money: the drug plan you pick sets what you hand over at the pharmacy every month next year, and two plans covering the same prescriptions can sit hundreds of dollars apart over a year.
The bigger one is your Medicare number. Once it is typed into a form on a look-alike site you cannot swap it the way you swap a card number, and it can be used to bill Medicare in your name for years. Medicare's own guidance on fraud is blunt about who may ask for it: your doctor, and the people you choose to deal with.
People 60 and older reported losing $2.4 billion to fraud in 2024, in the Federal Trade Commission's latest report to Congress.
Here is my honest take. This one does not have to fool you about Medicare. It only has to fool you about the first line on a screen, in the one month you have a real reason to be looking. Which is why it stops working the moment you stop clicking the top result. An advertisement has to be labeled: look for the word Ad or Sponsored, scroll past it, and find the .gov ending.
WHAT TO DO
Type the address yourself. Go to Medicare's plan finder, put in your zip code and your prescriptions, and read your own 2027 costs. It is free, asks for no paperwork, and there is no eligibility test to pass. If you would rather talk to someone, call Medicare at 1-800-633-4227 — and use that same number to report a page that has already asked you for your Medicare number.
Most people compare plans once, then forget by January what they decided and why. The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit walks the comparison in order — drugs, doctors, three cost scenarios — with worksheets, phone scripts and a directory of free help in every state. It is $47, with 30 days to change your mind.
One question for you: do you start at a search engine, or type the address in yourself? Hit reply and tell me. I read every reply, and what you tell me decides what I cover next.
Know someone comparing plans this fall? Forward this to them, or send them your personal sign-up link so they get the next one too.
Source: the Federal Trade Commission's consumer alert on health insurance scams during open enrollment.
Written by Ellen Marsh
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