the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, we reported earlier that in June, the FTC warned about scammers stealing people’s Medicare numbers and billing Medicare for COVID-19-related services (and other things) that they sometimes got — and sometimes didn’t. The difference now? You might be getting the bill instead of Medicare. That’s because after May 11th, when the COVID-19 Health Emergency officially ended, Medicare and other health insurance plans stopped paying for many at-home over-the-counter COVID-19 tests. Once Medicare denies payment, those scammy companies could come back with a bill in your name.
Now our own safety activist Frank Geraghty reported that , “Recently I informed Medicare that my family received a large number of covid 19 test kits without any statements mostly from bogus doctors and clinics in the past year. Medicare who is aware of this growing problem and is apparently paying out (including my case) with no questions asked. The person I talked to at Medicare thanked me for the information and said the usual procedure was to retrieve the money first, followed by litigation. I was told that this fraud is happening all the time, unfortunately not many members report this type of fraud. Complacent customers are only part of the Medicare problem. My suggestion to Medicare was that a red flag should pop up when bogus doctors or clinics in a town thousands of miles away from a members residence requests payments from Medicare for covid 19 test kits sent to that Medicare member. I have been informed by Medicare that my case has been escalated to the Unified Program Integrity Contractor, hopefully my suggestion or some other money saving idea will be acted upon soon. If Visa and M/C operated in this careless way they would go out of business very quickly. “
Hey wash your hands.