Cold calling for MA

[Cenla Agent]

A woman I'm acquainted with reached out to me earlier and said that an agent had called her and enrolled her in Humana the other day. She is a dual of some sort. We had discussed MA a while back and decided she was better off with what she had. I think she had full Medicaid back then but it sounds like she has a somewhat reduced benefit now and having to pay some copays or coinsurance she wasn't before. I think one of the reasons she stayed with original Medicare was because she is getting some sort of infusion treatment and she didn't want to take a chance of Humana not approving (you can also do it at home) or having to go through a bunch of red tape. But she's very interested now because of all of the extra goodies like dental and vision and so on.

Anyway, this sounded like some kind of live transfer lead, or maybe the guy had a TM working for him who was making calls and then transferring them to her. She said when she answered the woman kept saying "Hold on, he's coming" until the agent was able to get on the line. I asked her if she had given anyone permission to call or filled out a business reply card or anything like that and she said no. I don't check this forum often, but I've seen some of you mention illegal cold calling being a big problem.

It has been a long time since I've done MA, especially with Humana. Are they doing third party verification? She said someone called today to verify the enrollment. At that point she thought "Let me talk to Cenla Agent first" and put them off till tomorrow. Would the person calling to verify the enrollment be someone from the carrier, or someone else from whatever boiler room this guy was calling from?

 

[Cenla Agent]

She says she thinks maybe her friend entered her info on a website.

 

[somarco]

She says she thinks maybe her friend entered her info on a website.

I believe the proper term is "former" friend

 

[Cenla Agent]

I believe the proper term is "former" friend

For some people it might be. The impression I got is that if she ends up liking the plan she might not be too upset that her friend signed her up for robo calls without her knowledge.

 

[kgmom219]

Any chance she has Humana Part D? They call their members to get them to switch to MA

 

[Cenla Agent]

Any chance she has Humana Part D? They call their members to get them to switch to MA

Nope, she has a different Part D company. Plus, I doubt that Humana's operation would come across as amateurish as the way she described it.

 

[Newby]

The offshore telemarketers call everyone 50 times a day. They just buy lists of seniors. Then the sell the transfers to agents in the US. The agents think they are immune to restrictions because "they didn't make the call and tell all the lies". It happens every day all day.

Even if your friend likes the plan I wouldn't let her keep that agent. They are part of the problem.

 

[Cenla Agent]

The offshore telemarketers call everyone 50 times a day. They just buy lists of seniors. Then the sell the transfers to agents in the US. The agents think they are immune to restrictions because "they didn't make the call and tell all the lies". It happens every day all day.

Even if your friend likes the plan I wouldn't let her keep that agent. They are part of the problem.

I suspect she is not going to like the plan. They are probably going to nail her with a PA for a treatment she is doing that can be done a different way. I advised her not to go the MA route last year when she said that this treatment was the most important thing to her and that she could not risk any disruption to how she is receiving it. There are some other complicating factors too. To my knowledge nothing in her situation has changed since then unless she needs some dental work done, which the MA plan probably won't pay a whole lot toward. She has virtually no copayments or coinsurance otherwise due to her Medicaid status.

I think a number of successful agents here will say that they're not in the habit of taking on clients who insist on doing the opposite of what they recommend.

 

[Todd King]

At that point she thought "Let me talk to Cenla Agent first" and put them off till tomorrow. Would the person calling to verify the enrollment be someone from the carrier, or someone else from whatever boiler room this guy was calling from?

Yes, the verification call came from the carrier.

 

[policywunk]

The offshore telemarketers call everyone 50 times a day. They just buy lists of seniors. Then the sell the transfers to agents in the US. The agents think they are immune to restrictions because "they didn't make the call and tell all the lies". It happens every day all day.

Even if your friend likes the plan I wouldn't let her keep that agent. They are part of the problem.

I had one of these telemarketers call when I was a client house.Client said I could answer the call and not only did the telemarketer argue with saying it was legal for him to cold call because he was not an agent but sumbich called back about 15 minutes later.