Getting Spammed to death by calls for medicare Advantage

[TwoTankAmin]

I am 77, I have medicare, the top of the line Medicare supplemental policy not availale to most folks and the same for my drug policy. These are fine for me and I willinginly pay $600+/month for these 3 policies. I am way ahead in terms of how much these save me. I pay no deductible or copay for any medical care and do not need a referral to see a specialist. I can see any doctor in America I want to without any red tape. My drug costs are high as I need several inhalers which cost many 100s each for a 90 day supply. As of 2025 I have 0 copays for them. My medical expense are pretty high.

I am guessing I am getting about 8-10 calls a day trying to sell me on a Medicare Advantage Policy. I am not even sure I could quality for Medicare Advantage based on income and net worth. But I do not want Medicare Advantage. The disadavantages of these policies over what I have and want would make them a down grade for me. I am now screening calls letting my answering machine handle them. The caller IDs are spoofing numbers and caller IDs. One even used a hospital name. When the machine answers, I wait to see if the caller leaves a message. If they start to do so I will pick up and let them know why I did no pick up intil I heard them speaking to leave a message. The spam calls do not ever speak when they know it is a machine answering. So far I have not had to pick up.

I have been on the do-not-call ist for a lot of years, but this no longer matters to the insurance companies selling these policies which are actually harming Medicare. There is a ton of fraud involving them which degreades medicare coverage in general but enriches the insurance companies.

*SIGH*

 

[GaryE]

Spam callers are very persistent, for all sorts of shady businesses. No one ever phones me but the doctors, as everything is texting now. So I ignore them.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

I've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I do not text and never have. I do not own/use a smart phone. If you want to reach me either do so by Email or voice via phone. I have a pay by the minute flip phone where I had ATT disable the texting function. I kept getting spam texts for which I was charged. I never opened any, I just deleted them.

 

[Fishmanic]

Change your phone number. Worked for me a few years ago.
What bugs me are all the tv commercials for medicare advantage. Sometime 2 commercials in a row. They make it sound like there are so many benefits to Medicare advantage but it’s not good coverage if you have chronic conditions necessitating many tests and Dr visits and procedures.

Like you, I have supplemental plan which pays all medical expenses. I pay quite a bit but feel it’s worth as i age.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

My flip phone is for when I am away from home. Otherwise, it is turned off. I have had my current land line number since about 1985. I am not inclined to change it.

@Fishmanic

I have he F plan which is only offered to people:

To get Medicare Plan F, a person must have been first eligible for Medicare before January 1, 2020, which means they must have been born on or before December 31, 1954, to turn 65 before that date.

I was born in 1948.

Key features of Plan F (for those grandfathered in)

• Broadest coverage: It was the only plan to cover all gaps in Original Medicare, including the Part B deductible.
• No out-of-pocket costs: For any services covered by Medicare Parts A and B, Plan F has no out-of-pocket expenses.
• Provider choice: You can use any doctor or hospital that accepts Medicare across the country.
• Guaranteed renewable: As long as you pay the premiums, your coverage cannot be canceled.
• No referrals needed: You do not need a referral to see a specialist.

 

[GaryE]

The world of private healthcare like yours is alien to me, and I'm glad of it. I have a national program I've contributed to all my life, and that is extremely effective. We risk discussing politics when the outside world looks at US healthcare, so I will now turn back to my regularly scheduled fishtalk.

 

[fishorama]

We have a newer, not quite so good Medicare supplemental & drug plans as you have. But, it's always something. Now there's a $2k deductible for drugs. My husband hits that the 1st month & pays nothing else. I take only a few older meds so will never hit that. I pay much less now than I did before.
But for several years we had free Medicaid & paid nothing for anything. That was great! I tried to tell them we have assets but here they only count some forms of income. WTH? Then we were "grandfathered" in for some covid reason.

I think every year will be something new to get used to.

We screen all our calls, most are spam. We now have cell phones but haven't given our #s out.

 

[Colin_T]

I was getting lots of spam email, text messages and phone calls when I was with Optus (phone company in Australia). It turned out they had been hacked a few times and even though I tried other phone companies, they turned out to be on the Optus network and I continued getting spam calls and text. Eventually I found a new phone company on a different network and haven't had any spam since (that was a bit over 2 years ago). Whilst you might not want to change your home phone number, sometimes it can help, especially with nuisance or spam calls. It's just a pity we get spam calls to begin with.

Is there a government department you can contact about the spam calls and they do something about it?

 

[GaryE]

They've identified you as an older person, and see that technologically, you are staying with old systems. Since I cut my landline and made some small tech shifts, I don't get many spam calls getting through. Before I did that, it was crazy, There were lots of calls.

Are they human, or are they robo-calls?

It seems they don't mind wasting resources calling and calling again even for people who answer and engage with a no. I guess the constant siege must work overall. My smart phone lets me identify them quickly and I rarely get sucked into answering. My provider flags a lot of spammers, and you learn the pattern of spoofed numbers. The less I answer, the less they try.

When I had a landline, I had no defences and the calls from various companies were endless. I don't see you having much recourse with your approach to technology. I think these predators line us up and keep hammering away calculating that eventually a percentage of us'll go into dementia and they can rob us blind!

If they can tag us as falling behind the herd, they're going to hunt us. I may not like many aspects of how technology operates in our societies, but you have to drop in a little to effectively drop out. I use my smart phone more and more, not though any love of it or any mad need for novelty, because in many ways it works far better (with a cost, just as you see with your flip phone tech. There's always a cost and the tech isn't always in our interests, as you know). You choose your poison. Yours right now is spam.

 

[Colin_T]

It seems they don't mind wasting resources calling and calling again even for people who answer and engage with a no. I guess the constant siege must work overall. My smart phone lets me identify them quickly and I rarely get sucked into answering. My provider flags a lot of spammers, and you learn the pattern of spoofed numbers. The less I answer, the less they try.

I used to get lots of spam phone calls 20yrs ago, before mobiles were common. We had a guy ring up claiming to be from Microsoft support. He went on for a bit and kept asking me to provide personal info. I refused to. Eventually I asked him for his details and he provided them to me (possibly an alias name and a phone number). I then said I was senior sergeant so and so from the police department. He went quiet for a moment, then there was muttering in the background before the phone was hung up at their end. They never called back.

I had another guy call me claiming to be from Microsoft support and he was trying to get personal info. I had him on the phone for about an hour before I said I was working in Microsoft in their support room and he wasn't there. I also said I had been tracing his call and had reported his location to the police. They should be outside about now. He quickly hung up the phone. There's a guy on YouTube that actually does that to hackers and criminal organisations. He hacks their system and talks to them while filming it.

The third guy claiming to be from Microsoft support spent about 20 minutes trying to get info out of me. I asked him for his details but he wouldn't provide them to me. Towards the end I said "Mate, I own an Apple computer, not a piece of crap windows".
He replied with "No, no, you must be mistaken (Asiatic Indian accent), you called Microsoft support and I am trying to help you".
I said "No mate, you're a criminal trying to get personal info out of me by claiming to be MS support when I actually use an Apple computer and have never called MS support."
He didn't want to accept that and kept claiming I called him asking for tech support.
In the end I said "Either give me your details and I will call MS support to verify you are who you claim to be, or fuplie off". He hung up.

I had another guy call me around that time trying to get my personal info. He was offering me a free cruise. I said I would love a holiday but couldn't afford it. He said I could have a free one. All I needed to do was give him my driver's license name and number, date of birth, etc, and my passport number. I didn't have a passport but didn't tell him that till later and he never asked if I had one. The conversation went on for well over 30 minutes and this guy was getting frustrated. I was just enjoying the conversation because I didn't get many visitors and his cruise sounded really nice. We stop off in various tropical locations and spend the day visiting sights. Then back to the ship for a decent meal and various games before bed.
After a while this guy goes "Are you going to give me your passport details?"
I said "I don't have a passport or driver's license"
He swore at me and did his nut saying I shouldn't be wasting his time. Then he hung up on me.

I had a lady call up from a political polling booth doing a survey. I spent about 2 hours talking to her about the government. We had a lovely conversation and towards the end I apologised for wasting her time. She said "Don't worry about it, it was just nice talking to someone without being told to fuplie off".

There are perks to being old and still have a good mind (relatively speaking). If you know they are scammers, I love toying with them. Talk to them and act dumb enough to let them think they are going to get a bite, but don't give them any info. I have done that to door knockers as well. People trying to sell stuff door to door and collecting for charities, etc. Just talk to them for as long as possible before telling them you can't afford it or don't have any money.

One I just remembered. My friend told me this. Someone called his mum's house while he was house sitting. She had been getting lots of spam calls and people trying to get personal information. They asked for the home owner and he said they were out. They asked who he was and he replied "I am a burglar robbing this place, who are you?". They hung up. He said if they want they can call the cops but then they have to wait for the cops, give details and explain why they were calling the house to begin with. Apparently his mum didn't get any spam calls for quite some time after that.

 

[Essjay]

Our landline provider will block phone calls from any number they recognise as spammers. I have disabled this as a couple of years ago the same company decided that emails from TFF were spam even though TFF was in my safe sender list and they blocked TFF emails from reaching my account. I didn't want them deciding that legitimate callers were spam. However, the system does still flag callers from their database and instead of the caller's number in the phone display it says 'nuisance?' so we never answer those.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

My provider is Verizon FIOS. They are somewhat crappy. Especially their software. I will not use any of it. When I got the occasional spam call I would manually block it from the Verizon site. The spammers are using spoofed information. I have gotten 3 calls already today which were clearly spam. All had a different name and number on the caller ID.

I simply do not answer the phone if I do not recognize the caller of the ID displayed. I let the machine answer. Any real caller leaves a message, the spammers do not. When I was answering the calls early on I knew it was spam almost immediately. A computer is doing the dialing and when I say hello there is a pause indicating the computer is routeing me to a recording. If I were to engage with it I would be directed to a human as far as i can tell.But I always hang up. Initially hit recording would start and as soon as it it I hung up.

I just spent abut 15 minutes on the phone with my PC guy. I need help on a few things:
1. Get the extended support for win 10 without paying, He can like;y do that.
2. Set up my old laptop and DL windows 11 with a local account. There are ways to install 11 on a computer Microsoft will say is not able to do have it work. I need 11 so I can use TurboTax from my desktop. I could use 10 if I was willing to file from the Intuit site not from my PC. There is no way I want to let Intuit have my tax forms.
3. A recent 10 update installed something on my 10 box which is I wake it u[p from sleep or reboot puts spam onto the the initial screen, if I do anything but click on the 4 links offered, the spam vanishes. I want that crap off my box. I HATE ADS and wok hard to avoid them.

The sad truth here is have been using windows since 1988. Over time it has become more and more invasive. 10 is the most invasive software I have ever had on any of my PCs over the years. 11 improves that for Microsoft. I do not want an account with them. I have never visited an app store. I consider almost all apps to be spyware and I refuse to DL anything from an app store.

The only thing more invasive today than Microsoft Windows is a smart phone. Consider this. It used to be said of the old Soviet Union that 1/2 of the people were used to spy on the other half. What would have been manna from heaven for the USSR govt. back then would have been to be able to track everything all of their citizens were doing 24/7. They would have killed to have all their people having a smart phone back then. Today most people willingly give up their privacy. And they actually pay to do this.

 

[fishorama]

Some of our "regular" callers use different area codes from various individuals, so we don't answer those. They may be someone we'd (almost) like to hear from. No ID, no message, no response.

Our old cell phone #s were not local either but we could ignore old political ads from long ago. We may miss some calls but better that than more spam.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

My flip phone is my emergency line. So most of the time it is turned off. However, the last time I upgraded the flip phone I started to get spam texts. Since my plan is pre-paid and billed by the minute, I have to pay for those texts arriving. Since I do not text, they were the only incoming texts. I employed a simple solution. I had ATT disable the texting function. That stopped the spam texts. I do not have voice mail activated on this phone.

This morning I had 3 spam calls between 9:00 and 9:30. I answered none. The problem is this is the time of year when one is allowed to change their health insurance. Since Medicare Advantage is the most profitable plan for the insurers, the outfits who chase after customers are well compensated and they never give up, However, these calls will end at the end of the years when the time period during which one can change their plan ends.

Here is the thing in all of this- I hate advertising. This resulted in my being a channel surfer on TV starting a very long time ago. When the ads come on I change the channel. I do not respond well to adverts and my normal practice is often not to buy products which are heavily advertised. I really do not want push technology I prefer to find what I want or need on my own.

I may be able to have my computer guy use a laptop I bought in 2023 to help me when I sold fish at weekend events. I though I would have to do a lot of it to sell out my breeding stock and all the accumulated offspring. Since i am willing to discount prices by about 20% when a buyer picks them up instead of my having to ship them. I started having buyers travel long distances to buy. I am in NY and have had people fly in from as far as Colorado.

What happened was I managed to sell most of what I wanted to much faster than I had imagined it would take. I had even bough a smart phone for the purpose of getting the laptop online so I would not have to use WiFi. I wanted to move fish stuff to the laptop so it would not allow any hack to get to my real info on my PC. What complicated things was being able to do needed updates etc. on the PC from home as I did not want to use my ISP for this. I wanted to use the cell to connect even at home. But the number of bars I got at home were so low that it would almost lock the lap top up when I tried to do things.

It turned out that I used the laptop only one time at an event and since then it and the phone have sat unused and uncharged for a long time. My computer guy thinks he can get windows 11 to work on the laptop which would be ideal. The only thing I need Windows 11 for is Turbo Tax. My guy knows how I use my PC and he said I can probably get away with using Windows 10 for as much as another 5 years at little risk. I could use Turbo tax with 10 if I did my taxes online at Intuit. The was no way that was going to happen. byw- I started using TT when is was a DOS based program and not owned by Intuit,

The smart phone is basically old and likely worthless. It has not had a charged battery for about 18 months now. It is in the pile of useless devices I have which includes my Apple mini which is a $1,500+ paper weight (this includes the software). This limited foray into the Apple Universe convinced me that I would never buy anything made by Apple again. I was trying to avoid Windows 10. I even tried to work with Linux before i tried Apple. But I found the way Linux worked to be too idiotic and abandoned it pretty fast.

My computer guy managed to get my Windows 10 system to where it mostly cut Microsoft out of the process. Updates get paused for some time until I want to DL them and I have local acct. Edge doesn't work and cannot be updated on my box. I do not store history nor cookies and I have CCleaner Pro to help me clean things regularly. I do not have a microphone attached to my PC and I only buy monitors which do not have a built in camera.

Dang- I just screened another spam call.......