Open enrollment is here. Watch out for health insurance scams

LTC Eugene Chu
..."Nationwide, lawmakers and regulators are taking notice of how health care plans are sold. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, is investigating complaints about the marketing of Medicare Advantage plans. And in May, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services noted that complaints about marketing practices for Medicare Advantage and Medicare prescription drug benefit plans rose from 15,497 in 2020 to at least 39,617 in 2021.

“Scams involving health care have increased exponentially,” said Delaware Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro, who also chairs the antifraud task force of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Multiple factors are causing the increase, Navarro said. Rising health care prices can drive up the cost of regulated health plans, such as those that are compliant with the Affordable Care Act. Higher costs push more Americans to look for cheaper alternatives that usually don’t provide as much coverage and can confuse consumers. Those types of plans proliferated under President Donald Trump’s administration, Navarro said.

“I don’t want to sound political,” said Navarro, an elected Democrat, “but the previous presidential administration was really pushing the skinny plans and the alternatives to the ACA, and I don’t necessarily think that they understood the fraud that was associated with these plans.”

Finally, Navarro said, because states are the primary regulators of insurance, tamping down on health care scams can be like playing a game of whack-a-mole — when one state takes action, scammers move to another one to open shop."...