Spike in health coverage robocall scams linked to open enrollment

’Tis the season for healthcare phone scams.

According to new data released by Hiya, a company that tracks phone fraud and spam, calls offering phony health plans and fraudulent Medicare support skyrocketed between October and November this year, coinciding with the start of the marketplace open-enrollment period that runs from Nov. 1 through Jan. 16.

Whether the automated message purports to be from Dale at Elite Medicare Options or Ashley from the Health Enrollment Center (both real examples that Hiya has documented), the fraud-protection platform found that most scammers will try to get their target to interact with a button- or voice-activated menu.

The menu might be disguised as a survey of Medicare coverage or an option to opt out of receiving future calls, according to Hiya, but either way, the person who responds to the automated call could be in trouble.

“A ‘yes’ answer to the robocall will likely connect the recipient with a live agent who will try to get the victim to reveal personal information, such as a Medicare number,” according to a Hiya blog post. “A ‘no’ or ‘remove me from the list’ answer lets the scammer know it’s a valid phone number, which could lead to future scam calls.”

Hiya collected its latest data through a survey of its own 100,000+ “honeypot” lines—phone numbers that aren’t associated with real individuals and that companies shouldn’t have a reason to ring.

The results track with the Federal Trade Commission’s own assessment that healthcare scams typically spike during open-enrollment season. The consumer-protection agency recommends hanging up, viewing a written statement of benefits for any health plan you consider, and never giving out personal information over the phone.

Robocallers: They’re just like us!

Jonathan Nelson, director of product management at Hiya, told Tech Brew that healthcare scams are part of a trend cycle in which bad actors seek to capitalize on timely topics.

“It’s something that’s on people’s minds as they go into the next year—making sure they still have coverage,” he said. “After that, though, to be honest with you, we’re going to see a decline. It should be starting here within about a week. And the reason is, the scammers take the holidays off, too.”

Don’t drop your guard, though. According to Nelson, tax-related phone scams typically surge in the New Year. And there’s another emerging threat consumers have to look out for: phone conversations with AI bots that might be harder to spot than a pre-recorded message.

“They’ll be able to actually hear what you say and craft a new response and generate the voice on demand,” he told us. “All that is actually quite easy to do today.”