Medicare Scams: How to Spot Fake Calls About Your Coverage

Someone calls with good news. There is a new Medicare card with a chip, a free knee brace your doctor “ordered,” or a better plan that will save you money. All they need is your Medicare number to verify your eligibility. It sounds harmless, even helpful. It is not.

Your Medicare number is as valuable to a criminal as a credit card, because it can be used to bill the program for services you never received, leaving fraud attached to your name. This guide explains how Medicare scams work, what they sound like, and how to keep your number and your benefits safe.

What it is

A Medicare scam is any attempt to steal your Medicare number or money by pretending to offer benefits, equipment, plan help, or a new card. Scammers use the number to file false claims with Medicare, and they sometimes also collect bank details to charge you directly.

These scams blend in because Medicare really does involve cards, plans, and equipment. The criminals borrow that everyday language, then add urgency and a friendly tone so their request to “just confirm your number” feels routine.

How it works

1. A call, text, or door-knock offers something free or urgent: a new card, a brace, a genetic test, or a better plan.
2. They ask you to confirm your Medicare number, and sometimes your bank or Social Security details, to “qualify.”
3. They bill Medicare for items or services you did not get, or enroll you in a plan you did not choose.
4. They strike hardest during Open Enrollment each fall, when plan changes feel normal and the scam calls blend into legitimate ones.

A common variation is the “free” medical equipment or genetic-testing pitch. The scammer ships cheap braces or test kits to many people, bills Medicare hundreds or thousands of dollars per person, and disappears, leaving a trail of charges on the victims’ records.

A real example

Eleanor, 74, gets a cheerful call saying Medicare is replacing everyone’s cards with new chip cards, and the representative just needs to confirm her current number to mail hers. There is no new chip card, but the request sounds reasonable, so she reads off her number. Weeks later, her Medicare Summary Notice lists charges for back braces and a knee brace she never ordered, from a supplier she has never heard of. She spends hours on the phone untangling claims she never made. The “new card” never came, because it never existed.

By the numbers

• Medicare loses an estimated tens of billions of dollars a year to fraud, errors, and abuse, and improper Medicare payments totaled about $31.7 billion in fiscal year 2024 (HHS).
• In fiscal year 2024, HHS-OIG reported more than $7 billion in expected recoveries and over 1,500 enforcement actions against people and companies defrauding federal health programs (HHS-OIG).
• Older adults are far more likely than younger people to be targeted by health-care and Medicare-related scams (FTC).

Red flags to watch for

• Anyone asking for your Medicare number out of the blue.
• Offers of free equipment, braces, or genetic tests in exchange for your number.
• Pressure during Open Enrollment to switch plans right now.
• A caller who says you need a new plastic or chip Medicare card, especially for a fee.
• A request for your bank or Social Security details “to confirm coverage.”

How to protect yourself

1. Never give your Medicare number to someone who contacts you. Treat it like a credit card.
2. Remember that Medicare will not call you out of the blue to sell a plan or ask for your number.
3. For any plan or coverage question, call 1-800-MEDICARE or visit Medicare.gov yourself.
4. Review your Medicare Summary Notices and Explanation of Benefits, and report charges you do not recognize.
5. Reduce unwanted contact. Scammers buy senior phone lists from data-broker and people-search sites. Removing your information from those sites, which a privacy or data-removal service can do for you, cuts down on the calls that start these scams.
6. Ask a family member to help review statements with you, so a stray fraudulent charge gets caught early.

If you’ve already responded

Watch your Medicare Summary Notices closely for unfamiliar charges and report them to 1-800-MEDICARE. You can also report fraud to HHS-OIG at oig.hhs.gov, and your local Senior Medicare Patrol can help you review claims and dispute false ones. Keep notes of who you spoke with and when.

In the news

• HHS-OIG efforts result in $7.13 billion in expected recoveries
• Senior Medicare Patrol: Dollars Lost to Fraud

Sources

• Medicare.gov: Reporting Medicare fraud and abuse
• HHS Office of Inspector General: Fraud
• FTC: Annual report on protecting older adults
• FBI IC3: Elder Fraud