Q. My friend told me you can’t laminate your Medicare card, is this true?
A. Medicare advises beneficiaries to not laminate their Medicare cards, but it is not prohibited. The reason for this is that laminating the card makes it more difficult to determine if the card is authentic and creates a challenge for scanning devices. A popular scam, too, is targeting Medicare beneficiaries to order a plastic version of their card. These are scams to get your personal information because Medicare only issues paper cards, never plastic. If your card is damaged, you can print a new card directly from your Medicare.gov account.
Other tips that Medicare offers to protect your personal information and reduce fraud include:
- Become familiar with how Medicare uses your personal information. If you join a Medicare health or drug plan, the plan must let you know how it will use your personal information also.
- Remember that Medicare will never call to sell you anything or visit you at your home.
- Don’t give your Medicare card, or number, or your Social Security card, or number, to anyone except your doctor or entities you know need to have it (such as an insurer or provider company working with your doctor) or people who work with Medicare, like your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) a state program that gets money from the federal government to give free local health insurance counseling to people with Medicare.
- Never accept offers of money or gifts for free medical care. If it seems too good to be true — it is.
- Don’t allow anyone, except your doctor or other medical providers, to review your medical records or recommend treatments or services.
- Don’t join a Medicare health or drug plan over the phone unless you called Medicare to do so.
Remember that Region IV Area Agency on Aging and our certified Michigan Medicare and Medicaid Assistance Program counselors are here to help. If you have questions or concerns, please contact us at 1-800-803-7174 or [email protected].
Q. I’m worried my neighbor is a target of scam artists. She is older and recently widowed. I saw her talking to a man and she mentioned later she was getting her deck cleaned & stained. But she doesn’t have a business card from him, just a cell number, and she already paid a deposit. What can be done?
A. According to the National Council on Aging, older adults lose an estimated $3 billion each year to financial scams.
The warm weather months tend to see an increase in home improvement scams relating to roofs, windows, gutters, and driveways and often target older homeowners. According to Eldercare Locator, older adults are prime targets of scams because they are more likely to have a “nest egg,” to own a home that has equity, and have excellent credit. The older generation of Americans were generally raised to be polite and trusting, traits that can be exploited. And older victims are perceived to be unreliable witnesses due to possible memory issues.
A common scam locally is people going door-to-door with asphalt. One older adult gave $6,000 for resurfacing a driveway that never happened. These perpetrators can scam 10 people in a day ranging from Kalamazoo to Indiana. They switch license plates making it more difficult for law enforcement to capture and prosecute.
If you, or someone you know, has been victimized by a scam, or you suspect you have been approached by a scammer, you should report to your local law enforcement and file a complaint with the FTC at www.ftc.gov or call 877-FTC-Help. You can also contact the Better Business Bureau www.bbb.org, Call For Action consumer protection advocacy group at www.consumer-action.org, or the State Attorney General’s office at www.michigan.gov/ag or call 517-335-7622.