Medicare Scam Calls: Free Braces, New Cards, "Plan Reviews" — What Medicare Actually Does by Phone

How big the problem is

"Medical & prescriptions" is the FTC's Do Not Call category for calls about Medicare plans, health insurance, prescriptions, medical devices and health-care discounts. In the FTC complaint files this site ingests, it accounted for 18,690 complaints between July 27 and September 2, 2026 — about 490 a day, 6.5% of all Do Not Call complaints, and 70% of them flagged by the complainant as robocalls. The volume rises every fall: Medicare's Annual Enrollment Period runs from October 15 to December 7, and the weeks around it are when the "plan review" and "you may qualify for additional benefits" campaigns peak.

The targets are people 65 and over, who are both the intended audience for Medicare marketing and the most heavily robocalled demographic in the complaint data. The pitches borrow the vocabulary of legitimate Medicare Advantage marketing, which makes them harder to dismiss than an obvious prize scam — so the useful thing to know is not what a scam sounds like, but what Medicare and the companies it regulates are actually permitted to do by phone.

What Medicare will and won't do on the phone

Medicare — the federal program, run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — does not make unsolicited calls to sell or switch plans, to offer free equipment or genetic tests, or to ask you to "confirm" or "update" your Medicare number. If Medicare or one of its contractors calls, it is about something you initiated or have paperwork for: a claim you filed, a question you asked at 1-800-MEDICARE, a survey you agreed to. Medicare's own fraud guidance is at medicare.gov.

Private companies that sell Medicare Advantage and Part D plans are allowed to market by phone, but under tight CMS rules: they may not cold-call people who have not given permission to be contacted, they must identify the plan or agency they represent, they may not claim to be from Medicare or the government, they may not offer cash or gifts to enroll, and since 2023 third-party marketers must state up front that they do not represent every plan available. A caller who says "I'm calling from Medicare" or "on behalf of Medicare" to sell you a plan has already broken the rules, and that alone is reason to hang up.

Your Medicare number (the Medicare Beneficiary Identifier on your red, white and blue card) is worth as much to a fraudster as a credit card number: it is used to bill Medicare for equipment, tests and services you never received. Medicare and legitimate plans already have it. The only time to give it out is to your own doctors, pharmacists, insurers and people you have chosen to help you with your coverage.

The scripts running right now

• "Free" back, knee or wrist braces, or a "covered" medical-alert device. The caller needs your Medicare number to "check eligibility"; equipment you never asked for arrives, Medicare is billed thousands, and your record now shows a diagnosis you do not have. Durable-medical-equipment fraud has been the subject of some of the largest federal health-care fraud takedowns of the last decade.
• Genetic, cancer-screening or COVID test kits "at no cost to you". Same mechanism: a cheek swab you did not need, billed to Medicare under your number, often ordered by a doctor who never saw you.
• Your new Medicare card, or a "plastic" or "chip" card. Medicare replaced all cards in 2018–2019 with the current MBI cards and mailed them free; there is no upgraded card, and no fee to receive one.
• The "plan review" or "benefits check". A robocall or agent says you may be eligible for extra benefits — dental, groceries, a flex card — and needs your Medicare number and date of birth to "see what you qualify for". Some of these are unlicensed lead generators selling your data; some are enrollments you did not consent to.
• Prescription-discount and "Medicare-approved" pharmacy calls asking for your Medicare and card numbers to "set up delivery".
• Impostor calls claiming your Medicare is suspended or your number was "used fraudulently" and must be verified now — the same pressure script used in the Social Security and IRS impostor scams, and, like them, false.

The common thread is a request for your Medicare number, Social Security number or bank details from someone who called you. Nothing Medicare does requires that.

What to do

Hang up on any unsolicited call about Medicare, no matter how it is labeled — the carrier labels miss brand-new numbers. If you think there might be something to it, call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) yourself, or your plan on the number on your membership card. If you have questions about coverage options, your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) gives free, unbiased counseling; its counselors do not sell anything.

If you gave your Medicare number to a caller: read your Medicare Summary Notices (or check your claims at medicare.gov) for equipment, tests or visits you did not receive, and report anything wrong to 1-800-MEDICARE. You can also ask Medicare to issue a new number if yours has been compromised. Report the scam to the Senior Medicare Patrol at 1-877-808-2468 or smpresource.org, which exists to help beneficiaries with exactly this, and to the HHS Office of Inspector General at 1-800-HHS-TIPS (1-800-447-8477) or oig.hhs.gov. File the call itself at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Then look the number up and leave a report on its page describing the pitch. Medicare robocall campaigns rotate numbers, but each number's page collects the complaints against it within hours of the FTC publishing them, and a first-hand description of the script is the most useful thing the next person who searches it will read.

Protecting an older relative

Most Medicare fraud starts with a phone call answered by someone who is polite to strangers. The practical protections are the same tools that stop other robocalls, set up on their phone rather than yours: the carrier's free spam filter (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile), iPhone's Silence or Screen Unknown Callers (guide), and registration on the National Do Not Call Registry so that any remaining sales call is by definition either unlawful or a scam. A landline with a call-blocking device that requires unknown callers to press a key before it rings has the same effect as a screening feature.

Two conversations help more than any setting: agree that Medicare-related decisions get made together, not on the phone; and agree that anyone who calls asking for the Medicare number gets told "my son/daughter handles that" and a hang-up. Scammers have a script for every objection except a dead line.

Sources

1. Medicare.gov — Reporting Medicare fraud & abuse
2. Senior Medicare Patrol
3. HHS Office of Inspector General — Report fraud
4. FTC — Do Not Call complaint data sets

Related

• Social Security scam calls
• IRS scam calls
• How to stop robocalls
• How to report scam calls
• Top reported US numbers

FAQs