Why your phone rings more in October
Open enrollment is one season when unsolicited Medicare contact can feel unusually normal, which gives scammers useful cover.
Between mid-October and early December, the mail gets heavier and the phone starts ringing. Some of it is legitimate marketing from real insurers. Some of it is licensed brokers who genuinely can help. And some of it is people who want your Medicare number.
The difficulty is that they all sound roughly the same, and this is the one time of year when a call about your Medicare plan feels like it might be expected.
Which is why the most useful thing to carry into this season isn't a list of scams. It's a clear sense of what the rules actually allow — because a surprising amount of what happens in October is already prohibited, and knowing that turns a confusing call into an obvious one.
What the rules actually say
| Medicare itself | Will not call you out of the blue to sell anything, and will never ask for your Medicare number, bank details or a payment over the phone. |
|---|---|
| Unsolicited calls | Plans and their agents are generally prohibited from calling you without permission. A cold call about your Medicare plan is a red flag on its own. |
| Door-to-door | Not allowed without an appointment you arranged. |
| Gifts | Agents may not offer cash or gifts above a nominal value to induce enrollment. “Free” gift cards for switching are not a thing. |
| Enrolling you on a call | An agent cannot enroll you in a plan during an unsolicited contact. |
| Your Medicare number | Treat it as sensitive. It is no longer built from your Social Security number — that changed in 2019 — but it is still the key to billing in your name. Only your doctors, pharmacists and insurers need it. |
Medicare plans and agents face specific restrictions on unsolicited marketing contact. If a conversation began because someone contacted you first, that alone is worth a pause.
The scripts that show up this time of year
- “Your plan is being discontinued.” Sometimes plans really do leave an area — and you'd be told in writing by your plan, not by a stranger on the phone. Hang up and check the letter.
- “You need a new Medicare card.” There is no fee for a replacement card and nobody will call to arrange one. This one has been running for years because it works.
- Free braces, testing kits or genetic screening. A durable-medical-equipment or lab billing scheme in almost every case. Your number gets used to bill Medicare for equipment you didn't need, which can also complicate getting the equipment you later do need.
- “I can get you extra benefits.” Often a pitch to move you to a plan that pays the caller a commission — sometimes without making clear you'd be leaving Original Medicare and your Medigap policy, which you may not be able to get back on the same terms.
- Urgency about the 7 December deadline. The deadline is real. The pressure to decide during the call is not.
- A text message about a “new card” or a “flex card.” The same pitch now arrives by text as often as by phone — AARP and other consumer-fraud trackers have flagged the short code 42474 as a common source, offering a new Medicare card, a benefits update, or cash back on a “flex card.” Medicare does not text. There is no flex card program and no cash-back benefit. Don’t tap the link; don’t reply.
The free help almost nobody uses
Every state has a SHIP — a State Health Insurance Assistance Program. Trained counselors, free, and structurally unable to profit from your decision. They don't sell plans and they earn no commission whichever one you choose.
That last part is the whole point. A broker may be perfectly honest and still only offer the plans they're contracted with. A SHIP counselor has no such constraint. Find yours at shiphelp.org or through 1-800-MEDICARE.
If you'd rather work with a broker — and many people reasonably would — ask two questions: which carriers are you appointed with, and how are you paid? An honest broker answers both without hesitation.
The habit for the season
- If they contacted you, don’t transact. Hang up and call back on a number you looked up yourself — 1-800-MEDICARE, or the number on your plan card.
- Never give your Medicare number to someone who called, emailed or knocked.
- Treat “free” as the warning word. Free equipment, free screening, free gift for switching — the item is bait for the number.
- Read your Medicare Summary Notice or claims at medicare.gov for things you never received. This is how equipment fraud gets caught.
- Report it to 1-800-MEDICARE and your local Senior Medicare Patrol at smpresource.org. Report even if nothing was lost — that’s how patterns get found.
- Decide nothing on a call you didn’t initiate. You have until 7 December, and it is always long enough to check.
- The same rule applies to text messages: don’t tap a link or call a number from an unsolicited text about your Medicare card or benefits, whatever short code it comes from.
The reason this season works so well for fraud isn't that people become careless in October. It's that a genuine deadline, real mail from real insurers and a legitimately confusing decision all arrive at once — and confusion plus a deadline is the environment every scam is built for.
You already have the defense. It's the same one that works the rest of the year: if they contacted you, hang up and call back on a number you found yourself.
Has this happened to you?
I’d like to hear about it
If someone tried this on you — whether it worked or you spotted it in time — write and tell me what happened. What did they say? What made you doubt it, or what made you believe it? The near-misses are often the most useful stories of all.
I publish these with permission, first names only, or completely anonymously if you’d rather. Nothing goes up without you seeing it first.
Tell me what happened →These are real accounts from real readers. We don’t invent stories or characters, here or anywhere else on this site.
This is general fraud-prevention information, not a substitute for reporting an active scam. The official reporting and assistance resources linked above are the right next step if you or someone you know may be a target.
Where these facts come from
Checked on 22 September 2026 against the sources listed below. Dollar limits and program rules change — if you're reading this well after that date, verify the numbers at the links below.
- Medicare — Protect yourself from fraud — https://www.medicare.gov/basics/reporting-medicare-fraud-and-abuse
- CMS — Medicare marketing rules for plans and agents — https://www.cms.gov/medicare/health-drug-plans/managed-care-marketing
- Senior Medicare Patrol — https://www.smpresource.org/
- SHIP — Free local Medicare counselling — https://www.shiphelp.org/
- AARP — Medicare flex card scams — https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/medicare-flex-card/
Edward Silva
Edward spent more than forty years as a computer professional — long enough to pick up one useful occupational habit: when somebody hands you a summary, go and read the actual documentation. He started The Second Half Guide after noticing that most writing aimed at people his age was either talking down to him or quietly selling him something, and that the plain facts — the dates, the thresholds, the dollar figures — were somehow the hardest part to find.
He's married, with two grown sons, both married themselves. He is not a financial adviser, an attorney or an insurance agent, and this site doesn't tell you what to do with your money. It tells you what the rules actually say, and links to where he checked.