Friday May 18, 2012
Please share this Fraud Alert with colleagues, consumers, or other professionals in your area. If you have any questions about the Illinois SMP program, or to receive these Fraud Alerts directly, please contact Erin Weir, Healthcare Consumer Protection Coordinator at AgeOptions.
This project was supported in part by grant numbers 90MP0026 and 90MP0127 from the U.S. Administration on Aging, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20201. Grantees undertaking projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official Administration on Aging policy.
Fraud In The News
The following are current news articles about health care and fraud issues.
Health Care Fraud:
1. “Suit Accuses Rehab Firm of Fraud” (STLToday.com) http://www.stltoday.com/news/state-and-regional/missouri/suit-accuses-rehab-firm-of-fraud/article_f842c6fe-be99-59cd-806d-f15c4ba1fad5.html
Consumer Fraud:
2. “Retiree Money Scams Flourish, Change With the Times (CNBC.com): http://www.cnbc.com/id/47040014/ /
Dear SMP readers,
This week’s Fraud Alert contains warnings about two scams reported this week, as well as a resource from the Citizen’s Utility Board about utility insurance plans.
Have a great weekend!
What you will find in this week’s Fraud Alert
· Telephone Scammer Claims to Be From WellCare
· Best Buy Gift Card Text Message Scam
· Citizen’s Utility Board Offers Resource About Utility Insurance Plans
Telephone Scammer Claims to Be From WellCare
We received a report this week about a caller who is claiming to be from WellCare. The caller contacted an older adult in Palatine, Illinois who happens to have WellCare Part D coverage. The caller requested the person’s WellCare ID number and her Medicare number twice, but the person refused to give the information. She hung up the phone and contacted WellCare’s customer service line, and they confirmed that the call was not from WellCare.
This individual was very smart to protect her information. If anyone calls on the phone and claims to be from a health care insurer, provider, bank, etc., they should not need to request your information – they already have it! Just hang up and contact the organization yourself if you would like to verify the call. Never give personal information away to anyone who calls on the phone or comes to the door, no matter where they say they are from.
Best Buy Gift Card Text Message Scam
A colleague here at AgeOptions reported a text message scam that she received this week claiming that she had won a Best Buy gift card. The text message said that she needed to enter a code at a particular website address in order to access her $1,000 gift card, and that there were only 118 gift cards left. The text message also indicated that she should reply with the word “cut” if she wished for the text messages to stop. Messages like this are usually scam artists hoping to obtain personal information from you – you will enter that personal information when you click on the link in the message, and the scam artist can then steal your identity, access your bank or credit accounts, or cause other damage. Even replying to the message with the word “cut” to try to get off of the scam artist’s list is a bad idea – replying at all will simply indicate to the scam artist that you are in fact a live person with a real phone number, so if you reply, the scam artist will usually add you to a list that will ultimately result in you receiving more scam messages.
The best thing to do with text messages like these is delete them. Do not respond or click on any links included in the message.
Citizens Utility Board Offers Resource About Utility Insurance Plans
To follow up on our article last week about utility insurance plans, we wanted to share a resource on these kinds of plans that was produced by the Citizen’s Utility Board (CUB). Often, CUB has found that these plans may not be a good idea for consumers, and sometimes the people who market these plans are very misleading. See the resource from CUB here for more information:
http://www.citizensutilityboard.org/pdfs/ConsumerInfo/MaintenancePlans.pdf
Erin Weir, MSW, LSW, Healthcare Consumer Protection Coordinator
AgeOptions
1048 Lake Street, Suite 300
Oak Park, IL 60301
phone (708)383-0258 fax (708)524-0870
ageoptions.org
AgeOptions, the Area Agency on Aging of Suburban Cook County, is committed to improving the quality of life and maintaining the dignity of older adults and those who care about them – through leadership and support, community partnerships, comprehensive services, accurate information and powerful advocacy.
Fraud Alerts contain information about current scams taking place in Illinois, announcements and updates about programs or services related to health care and/or fraud protection, and links to news articles about health care and fraud topics. Please forward any recommendations or announcements that you would like to be included in a future Fraud Alert to .