Medicare recipients warned about marketing

WASHINGTON — Mailers designed to look like official government forms. Buses sporting scam pitches for Medicare websites. TV commercials featuring celebrities who encourage people to sign up for Medicare plans that do not always include their current doctors.

With Medicare’s open enrollment under way through Dec. 7, health experts are warning older adults about a rise in misleading marketing tactics that might lead some to sign up for Medicare Advantage plans that do not cover their regular doctors or prescriptions and drive up out-of-pocket costs.

“It’s a very complicated environment where people are receiving information from companies that are also selling them plans,” said Gretchen Jacobson at the Commonwealth Fund, a health care think tank. “It’s important we find a way to protect and inform consumers.”

Business is booming in the Medicare Advantage plan marketplace, which offers privately run versions of the government’s Medicare program for people who are 65 and older or have disabilities.

Staff at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are on the trail. They are secretly shopping for plans by calling the numbers linked to some online, TV and newspaper ads placed by these marketing firms, according to an agency memo sent to insurers last month. Already, the operation has turned up insurance agents who were using inaccurate information to sell plans. In some cases, ads or agents have overstated the benefits that enrollees would get and the money they would save in the new plans.

“CMS is concerned about the marketing practices of all entities, including Third-Party Marketing organizations,” Kathryn Coleman, director of the agency’s Medicare Drug and Health Plan Contract Administration Group, wrote in the memo.

The agency reported a spike in complaints last year around misleading Medicare Advantage ads, receiving nearly 40,000 compared to 15,000 in 2020.