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posted on: 1/14/2012
revised:
It was inevitable that implementation of health reform would trigger
new consumer scams. A scam, by its nature, promises something great
for little cost; the essence of a "too good to be true" offer. The
pattern of consumer complaints about health insurance that we've
received overt the past several months indicates that conscientious
consumers could easily protect themselves by following a few basic
principles.
Scam patterns
The insurance scams reported to us follow this pattern:
All of the problems originate with a telephone call received by the
consumer. This is significant because we are unaware of any
consumers falling victim to a scam when they did their own research
online or made a telephone call to an insurance resource.
Additionally, the prevalence of e-mail based insurance scams seems
to be dramatically reduced in recent years. A telephone caller can
make claims with immunity,especially if the consumer is unaware of
his identity.
All of the
telephone solicitors reported to us have been male without a
significant accent.
The consumer victims report that they receive multiple calls from different sources.
This indicates that their name and contact information has been
entered into a sales lead generation system and is being sold to
multiple sources. While not all of these are illegitimate, there is
no way that a consumer can control the distribution of their private
information.
The telephone marketers do not sound like insurance enrollment professionals;
they use only their first names are raise concern with unrealistic claims, “too good to be true” claims and high pressure sales tactics
Consumers who make return calls to the marketers discover that the
marketer is working from home. The marketer's family members may not even be aware of the
ongoing telemarketing projects. This is a final clue.
The scam involves
a real legitimate insurance plan, but its price and features are
misrepresented.
The scam offer promises insurance far below the $450 per month
national average price.
The scam
promises coverage far better than prevailing medical plans.
Consumers may be tricked into believing that the insurance covers
the cost of current prescriptions, treatment for pre-exiting
conditions or diabetic supplies.
Protective measures
Since all of the scam reports follow the same pattern of
manipulation, consumers can protect themselves by following these five simple
rules:
1. Do not enter your contact information on a Web site that does not
contain an explicit privacy policy and a the contact information of
a privacy officer. Legitimate insurance enrollment sites
specifically state that they will not release your personal
information.
2. Don't accept unsolicited telephone calls from insurance
sales agents. There is no way that you can verify the legitimacy of
the caller even if they do a great job at "sounding legitimate".
3. If insurance is priced lower than you expected, be sure to know
why. Know what you are giving up in return for the low price.
4. If coverage sounds better than you expected, find it in writing.
Every legitimate insurance makes a summary of benefits, limitations
and exclusions available to consumers prior to purchase.
5. Know who you are dealing with. Too many consumers complain that
they were talking to "some insurance agent" without having any idea
of the identity, affiliations, training or license credentials of
the individual agent. Get the agent's name and contact information;
check them out on their Web site, Google or Facebook.
keywords: scam, health insurance,
telephone sales
related topics:
Risk of purchasing health insurance without professional advice
copyright 2012 by Tony Novak. All rights reserved. |
