How To Combat Medicare Insurance Marketing Calls by Medicare EZ as Pie Show

Welcome back to the Medicare EZ as Pie show. I am your host, Stephanie Garcia Hagen. I am the co-owner of Mesa Benefits, and we are your guide through the Medicare insurance process.

We, at Mesa Benefits want to be your Medicare insurance advisors. We also want to be your trusted advisor for things outside the scope of your Medicare insurance. Today’s discussion is one that we have with beneficiaries when they become Medicare eligible.

I thought it would be beneficial for folks to have some tools in the toolbelt and expectations around those tools for combating the Medicare insurance telemarketing calls.

The first slice of pie that I want to talk about today is why are these calls even happening in the first place.

I can only talk from my own experience so I will tell you that there are several factors.

Let’s talk about client acquisition. We as insurance agents and agencies grow our businesses by helping Medicare beneficiaries with their insurance choices. This is Just the bare bones of this business. Where do we find the clients that we get to help? We have referrals from other happy beneficiaries. We can send mailers. We host radio shows that showcase our knowledge and expertise to both help people when they are making their decision and also hopefully cause people to want to talk with us further and start the process to become our client. We can host seminars to disseminate information to folks with that same hope. We can write books and publish articles online. There are also newspaper articles and print advertising. Along with lots of other mechanisms for an agent or agency to showcase their knowledge and set themselves apart from other agents and agencies. These are all ways that agents and agencies organically generate business for themselves.

Here’s where the calls that you are getting come into play.

I talk a lot about the Joe Namath, William Shatner, JJ walker type ads on the TV. Those ads are targeted marketing with a phone number that sends you to a call center that is most likely run by an insurance carrier so that you can be enrolled in their particular plan. If you call them and don’t enroll in a plan, they and their associates can call you to see if you have decided to move forward. Their associates will likely call you to see if you have changed your mind.
There are business reply cards that are mailed to you. If you send it in or call the number on the card, you will probably be transferred to or called by a broker who has purchased that lead from the vendor. The filled-out card or the call to the call center is now the permission to contact that the vendor needs to call you to inquire about your interest in Medicare insurance.

The new rules that I talked about in the last segment encompass this situation. Those permission to contact cards are only valid for 12 months.

Am I suggesting to you that you should never call one of those numbers? Do I think that you should not send in one of those cards? Because I’m a local insurance broker, I would definitely rather you call me so I can give you advice based on our local market and the programs that we have available right here in your area. You could very well receive very sound advice from one of the brokers that you talk to as a result of these types of interactions, but you could also be led in a direction that is not right for your situation. If given the choice between talking with a person in your hometown vs someone across the country, I advise that local is always best.

Let’s move on to slice of the pie #2. If you are getting the calls when you didn’t call a number or send in a business reply card.

The first step that I advise people to take is to get registered for the national do not call list. You do that by going to donotcall.gov or call 1-888-382-1222 (TTY: 1-866-290-4236) from the phone you want to register. It’s free.
If you register your number at donotcall.gov, you’ll get an email with a link you need to click on within 72 hours to complete your registration.

It will take 31 days for the calls to stop. This allows companies to take you off their lists because you have opted out.
I want to make a distinction here, too. The national do not call registry is effective for legitimate businesses. Telemarketing firms are legitimate businesses and are held to standards by the FTC – the federal trade commission – that regulate their practices. Updating their call lists against the national do not call registry is one of those regulated practices. What the do not call list doesn’t do is protect you from scammers by way of your phone number not being called. In the instructions stated a minute ago, there was a step where you register online 72 hours after registering your phone. The online portal is where you can report unwanted calls. If you didn’t suffer any type of loss, like loss of money, you can also report unwanted calls at donotcall.gov. If you did suffer a loss, you can report the scammer to reportfraud.FTC.gov. You’ll need to provide the number the call came from using your caller id even if you think its spoofed or fake, the number they asked you to call back and the exact date and time of the call.

The do not call service does not block your number from the legitimate businesses.

I also want to mention that once you register your phone, your registration does not expire.

Slice of the pie #3 for today is how to block or label unwanted calls.

Call-blocking means technologies or devices that help stop a lot of the unwanted calls that you get. Different types of phones have different capabilities for call blocking and call labeling. Have you ever received a call on your cell phone that went immediately to voicemail? Then when you looked at the caller id it says potential spam? Your phone has a blocking and labeling function on it already. It didn’t stop the caller from leaving a voicemail, but it didn’t intrude on your day by actually ringing the phone. If that call is in fact a scammer, you can go through the reporting functions stated a minute ago. To find out more and to watch somehow to videos, go to consumer.FTC.gov.

Slice of the pie #4 – what if you answer the phone? What do you say if you do not want to talk to the person.

I’ve heard every variation of this when talking to beneficiaries. I have heard that people ask oh wow, what are the details and then set the phone down and allow the person on the other end to ramble on. I’ve heard of people politely asking for their name to be removed from the list. I’ve heard of folks yelling out of frustration at the person on the other end of the phone. I’m not sure that any of these tactics are particularly effective. So let me give you some advice. Remember in the last segment where I told you that there are marketing rules that licensed agents and agencies are required to follow? One of the main complaints that are received are related to this exact issue.

If you answer the phone and you did not request or do not remember requesting, they call you say this to them: please provide evidence of my permission for you to contact me. If they give you a date and time, there is a likelihood that they have a signed permission to contact card in front of them. If you do not want to talk to them, still ask them to take you off the list. If they tell you that you are a member of the insurance company they work for, and you don’t want to talk to them, tell them to take you off their list. If they don’t have a viable permission to contact form or reason, they will most likely hang up the phone and you can block the number from your phone using your phone’s specific function for doing so. If calls persist from different numbers – those happen through robo dialer technology so that you aren’t able to block the calls moving forward, when you answer the phone tell them that you would like their insurance license number so that you can report them to CMS and the state licensing board or to every insurance company that exists. They will either tell you that your name will be removed from the list, or they will simply hang up.

The practice of calling beneficiaries over and over again without express permission to contact is a prohibited marketing practice. There are ways to avoid and decrease the calls.

One is to register your phone with the do not call list. Another is to avoid calling the numbers on the television for any reason. If you have a question about programs available that you would like to know more about, call Mesa Benefits. We are here to be your guide through the Medicare insurance process. We can be reached by calling 970-549-0410 or by reaching out on the web at mesabenefits.com.

Another way to learn more about Medicare itself and the options available for the insurance to go with it is to continue listening to the Medicare EZ as Pie show. We break down the entire Medicare insurance system into 4 easy to enjoy slices of pie right here every Saturday morning at 8am.

Our next segment is an interview with an agent that you’ve heard from before. She has an interesting perspective on Medicare insurance and has an event coming up that we’re going to talk about after the break.

This is the Medicare EZ as Pie show. I am your host Stephanie Garcia-Hagen. We’ll be right back.

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