Ken Moraif  

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Retirement Planners of America podcast where we try to have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have when talking about all of this financial stuff. And in this particular episode, we have something I think that is very, very, very important for all of you who are of a certain age, I’ll say, and that is how to keep yourself from becoming a Medicare victim. And then so and then also we have a part two to this, which is insurance and Medicare premiums in 2026 are going to go up significantly. What to do about that? And that’ll be the follow on podcast to this one. So make sure you watch this one, and then you go and watch the other one as well. So we got two of them for you. So I want to bring Lynn Tim into the conversation. Hi Lynn. How are you? I’m great. Thanks for letting me come today. This is right in your baileywick, right wheelhouse? This is your wheelhouse, yes. And you talk to clients about it all the time and all this stuff. So let’s start off with how. How do people get caught up in in becoming a victim of this, this when they’re signing up for Medicare, or people who are messing around with them and doing that kind of stuff? How does this happen?

Lynn Timm  

So I get calls all the time from people saying, I just saw this commercial on TV. I’m missing out on something. Are you sure that I’m in the right plan? So step one is, don’t call that number,

Ken Moraif  

because start there and all your problems are over.

Lynn Timm  

Call me. Don’t call the number. Because, believe me, my own mother, when I first started in this business. She was my first client, and this was 1213, years ago. She was on a Medicare supplement plan, and she saw the commercial on TV saying that she could get dental so she just wanted to get a dental plan. So she called the number and they enrolled her in a Medicare Advantage plan. So they didn’t tell her to cancel her medicare supplement, they didn’t tell her that she could possibly lose her medicare supplement if she bought a Medicare or enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. And so she signed up and had a few years where she thought she, you know, she just wanted a dental plan. Well, she had two plans, and you can’t have two plans, so one negates the other Oh, my. So that means that the medicare supplement that she was paying for years, a monthly premium, didn’t even work.

Ken Moraif  

So what would have happened if she filed a claim?

Lynn Timm  

It just would have gone through the advantage plan. So the advantage plan managed her care, because that’s what advantage plans do. They they provide everything that Medicare offers.

Ken Moraif  

She would have still gotten money for that, but she was paying for a plan that she didn’t need, basically, right, right? She was double paying for nothing, exactly.

Lynn Timm  

This was my own mother. And of course, this didn’t happen when I was an agent back then, but, but I corrected it, you know, as soon as she became my client. But I do get calls all the time, and these are people, you know, our clients that we’ve enrolled, we’ve talked about this, but they can’t remember all this. Medicare is so complicated, very complicated. So, you know, they don’t know. They see the commercials, they believe what they’re hearing. And then they, you know, dental is so important, so they all want a dental plan, but it’s, it’s very misleading. And there are organizations called third party marketing organizations that take advantage of these seniors.

Ken Moraif  

These commercials are during the enrollment period, right? I mean, you get bombarded. I mean, you can’t turn on the TV, and if you just turned 65 turn off your phone, yes, because somehow they know who you are. Oh yes. And boy, howdy, your phone explodes. You know that I thought, you know, with clients, we work with a lot of people who are, you know, who are about to retire, you know, who are in that period before they retire, but also a lot of people who are, and I’ve often thought, you know, when they were trying to find Bin Laden, you know, he turned 65 during the time that they were trying to find him, and they were looking all over the world for him, I was thinking, man, these guys know everybody in the world at 65 all we have to do is ask them to find bin Laden. They would have found him in a day

Lynn Timm  

the marketing companies Exactly. Where the heck do we need the

Ken Moraif  

CIA for these guys are good. So true. So when you turn 65 all of a sudden, every how do they even know where’d they get this information from? How do they know that you just turned 65 and you’re eligible? Or where’d they get these marketing

Lynn Timm  

companies have mailing lists for sale. So these mailing lists are for sale, and anybody can buy them. So agents can purchase those. When they start these call centers, buy them, and they just, you know, go to dial, yeah.

Ken Moraif  

Now you told me, before we went on, that it is actually illegal for them to contact but they do it anyway. Is that what you said?

Lynn Timm  

So they are not supposed to contact people without their permission. Okay? So once now they can do it. It really before they turn 65 but once they turn 65 they’re supposed to have permission. So I’m not sure exactly how they get around that.

Ken Moraif  

So if I’m getting 1000s of calls from people because I just turned 65 these people are basically violating the rules by doing that.

Lynn Timm  

It’s it’s a little bit of a gray area, but there’s lots of rules set out by CMS, which is Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that try to protect seniors against these types of things, but there always seem to find a way to take advantage of the system. And I always tell people, Don’t give out your Medicare number over the phone. And also, Medicare never calls you. Social Security doesn’t call you, so unfortunately, they answer the phone and they think they’re talking to Medicare or Social Security, and it’s very misleading. And so, you know, sometimes seniors are very elderly, maybe they don’t have someone helping them, you know, with their choices, and they give their number thinking they’re talking to Medicare, and then they get switched into a plan. The companies that switch them get paid commissions on Okay, let’s

Ken Moraif  

talk about that so they can switch the plan that you’re on. Yes.

Lynn Timm  

So with med How do they do that? With Medicare Advantage plans, you shop every time, every year during the open enrollment, which is October 15 through December 7, and so during that time, people can shop for the plans for the upcoming year and then make their changes. So because these companies are getting paid a commission per head, they are trying to get as many people signed up as they can. So they call the people they you know, help, or people see those commercials on TV and they call, and sometimes maybe they don’t want to enroll. Or sometimes they they say, let’s check your doctors. Let’s check your medications. And they’ll say, Oh, yes, all your doctors are on this plan, all your medications are covered. And then come January, they find out, Oh, my doctor doesn’t take this plan.

Ken Moraif  

And so they can switch the plan that you’re on if you talk to them on the phone and you give them a verbal Basically,

Lynn Timm  

yes, I had two clients that it happened to this year, and I talked to them, and they swore that they did not call, they did not change, but it got changed anyway. And I tried to get it corrected, but couldn’t.

Ken Moraif  

And so these people, they have, they’re like their preferred product that they want, right? Because they get a commission for that, right? And it may not be the best one for you, but yet they you call them because that this marketing company, or they call you, which they shouldn’t, but you answer anyway, and then they start convincing you that you know their thing is fantastic or not, right? They can just

Lynn Timm  

or they say, Oh, you’re going to get $2,000 worth of dental or you’re going to get some money to help pay your utility bills. Because people pay your utility bills. Well, these are people that have Medicare and Medicaid. So there’s people just straight Medicare and dual, yeah, but those people that have Medicaid as well, sometimes can get a stipend

Ken Moraif  

to help. Man, you know, if they included massage

Lynn Timm  

that hasn’t, that hasn’t happened yet, not yet. But ask me, about

Ken Moraif  

me, you throw in a massage and I’m in, okay,

Lynn Timm  

that would be a great just so, you know, hopefully the carriers are

Ken Moraif  

listening, but it has to, but it has to come to me, right? I want the massage therapist to come to my house. I don’t want to go to them, you know, be an expensive plan, I know, but, you know, I want that. So, yeah, so, so how do you protect yourself from this? What is, what does somebody do to, you know, help that not to happen to them.

Lynn Timm  

The best thing is, really not to answer your phone. If you see an 800 number calling, don’t call the numbers. You know you might get a lot of mail with a number to call. Don’t call those numbers. If you’re working with an insurance agent, check with your agent. Or you can call the number on your card directly and speak with you know your care better yet.

Ken Moraif  

Talk to us. Talk to us, talk to me, right? Yeah. So, you know, I’m gonna divulge my age, ooh, yikes. But when I turned 65 my phone blew up. I mean, I was getting 50 voicemails a day. That’s crazy. It was constant. And so one of the things that you can do, I don’t know if you can do with all phones, but I have, I have an iPhone, is you can actually tell it. There’s a setting where if a call comes in that is not in your contact list, it goes directly to voicemail. So that way, your phone doesn’t even ring. You don’t even know it rang. So that just sent all those things to voicemail, and then once a week, I delete like 500 literally. I mean, this is unbelievable. You know how aggressive these people were. The problem with that, just to give you a little asterisk to it, is that you may be wanting to get a call from somebody that’s not in your doctor’s office, or, yeah, somebody calls you that you were, that you were not, that you don’t know. And it won’t ring, it’ll go directly into voicemail. So that’s the downside of doing it. But for me, it was worth it, because I can go look at the whole list and scan through and go, Oh, this one, I you know, you can see what the transcript is, a little bit of it, and you can pick the ones that. Anyway, that’s what I did, because it was untenable. My phone was basically, it was ringing off the hook. It was crazy. Yes, so that’s a little tip for you. So talk to your professional don’t talk to these marketing organizations, right? That’s the best approach. Yes, and

Lynn Timm  

somebody you trust, yes. So yep, okay, but yeah, a stranger that calls you on the phone is not probably calling with your best interest at heart?

Ken Moraif  

Probably not, and for sure, don’t give them any information.

Lynn Timm  

Don’t give them your Medicare number. You know, there’s scammers out there as well, so that’s, you know, important personal information that should not be shared with a stranger over

Ken Moraif  

the phone. That should be your default setting, right? If somebody calls you or you’re calling them because you saw a TV ad. I mean, it’s terrible to say this, but your default setting should be, this is a scam. It may not be, but start with that. So at least you have your defense up, but certainly probably don’t even respond exactly.

Lynn Timm  

That’s the that’s the best way to be safe. All right.

Ken Moraif  

Lynn, thank you. Well, ladies and gentlemen, as I said, you were going to have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have when talking about being a victim of Medicare fraud or changing of your plans without your knowledge. And so I hope you enjoyed this video as much this podcast, should I say, as much as we enjoyed making it for you. I hope it found you healthy, wealthy and wise. Now make sure that you watch our next podcast, because it’s going to be on insurance and Medicare premiums are going up significantly in 2026 and so what can you do about it to help mitigate that? We’ll have that in our next podcast. So we’ll see you there. In the meantime, we’ll talk soon.