Because It Just Irritates Me
I don’t think that anybody should be able to have the website Medicare.com.
And here’s why —
(Click the little one to see the big one.)
The real Medicare site is Medicare.GOV
This is just gonna confuse old people, and confusing old people is not playing fair. I know it says “a non-government resource from eHealth” in real small print under the big ole giant Medicare logo, but I had to go get my glasses to see that, and even then I almost had to get the magnifying glass Momma left to me. That’s not a good thing.
Why didn’t you name it eHealth.com and include one of those refrigerator magnets in it? Old people love those things.
Very close site urls are common for California counties tax assessor. Specifically Santa Clara and San Diego counties.
I don’t think any of it is in the interest of J. Q. Public
1asshats
2This has been a sore spot with me since my parents were old (like I am now). Envelopes that look like a government tax refund envelope, phone calls that are misleading or downright fraudulent, misleading websites (WhiteHouse.com was, maybe still is — I haven’t checked, a porn site), the list goes on and on. Thankfully, my parents didn’t even own a computer. The government won’t do anything. They can’t/won’t even enforce the “no call” list, and garbage phone call services are taking advantage of that. Lying, cheating and stealing is becoming the norm.
Mr. B
3A few years ago the scam seemed to be sending the letter in an envelope with an official-looking eagle and fake U.S. seal on it. The letter would have scary-sounding threats in it, like “you are required to register your vehicle for extended warranty”, etc. The company would be named something with “National” or “Federal” in the title.
Not much can be done to forbid people from registering domain names like this; it’s just the way the internet has been set up and governed for 35 years (*). But what we can do is to complain to ehealth.com. Don’t use the phone number; that will just lead you to a call shop in India, where the complaint will never be passed on to the company. Instead send both email and a honest-to-god snail-mail letter to both the company and to the FTC.
(*) And it has let people do things like set up
4https://www.tedcruzforhumanpresident.com/
If we try to change it to require registration that goes through the U.S. government, you can bet Republicans would use it to suppress things like, oh say, https://juanitajean.com. And I need TWMDBS to retain some hope that I’m not in a Twilight Zone episode.
My 88yo dad almost threw away the mail telling him he was getting stock in a company purchased by a company he holds stock in, “here’s 10 shares and a check for a pro-rated partial 11th share” that he was entitled to due to his holdings.
The fake mail is so bad, he almost threw away the real deal!
5I just love it (sarcasm) when I get one of those junk calls and they say, “Is this the head of the house?” and I say “No this the b**ch of the house and get the f*** off my phone”. I love to play with those Microsoft guys who call from somewhere in India or Pakistan who wanna “help” me with my PC. They stopped calling me. I guess they don’t like the way I play with them or something.
6I am closing in on 70 (this year) and frankly I resent being refrigerator magnet shamed ma’am.
7Sadly it’s an example of (occasional) government incompetence.
8The gubmint Medicare IT nerds, more specifically: the managers/policymakers, should have registered all of the usual domain suffixes (.com, .net, .edu, etc) to Medicare; not just the “.gov” one, when they first set up the Medicare website way back whenever.
I think that a form of “eminent domain” power exists that would allow the CMC (Medicare) to reclaim/usurp those other domains. But that would take a political effort that doesn’t exist at the moment.
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So, until then, we’ll all just have to get the grossly misleading junk mail, spam, TV ads, and the rest of this crap. It’s only getting worse as the Rethugs continue gutting out effective, useful, government. Maybe in 2020 we can begin flushing these turds away (hard to even call them ‘turds’, they’re more like explosive diarrhea).
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Yeah, I’ve seen TV ads from this very same outfit pushing their “medicare.com” website, and received their junk mail (makes good fireplace kindling).
PS: The ‘elder’ cohort getting preyed on by this stuff leans and votes very heavily for the Rethugs, a large majority of ’em reveling in their MAGAotness. So, mas o menos: F*CK ‘EM. (yeah, I are one too, but not one of ‘them’)
9On further digging, “eHealth(insurance), Inc” might not be quite so bad overall.
Website http://www.ehealthinsurance.com/ http://www.medicare.com/
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It’s been around quite a while, functions as a health insurance broker, and has worked extensively with the CMC (Medicare), Obamacare, etc.
It acquired that “medicare.com” domain in 2012.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EHealthInsurance
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“eHealth, Inc. advertises itself as America’s first and largest private online marketplace for health insurance, with the company inception in 1997…
10The company’s website, eHealth.com (formerly eHealthInsurance.com), details prices for various health insurance plans and allows consumers to apply for coverage online.[1] The pricing is fixed by law and consumers cannot get lower prices elsewhere…
In 2013 eHealth, along with other “web brokers”, signed deals with Healthcare.gov to enroll subsidy-eligible consumers in the newly approved health plans offered through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) [2]…”
Three recent messages on the answering machine were from “Social Security,” telling me to call back right away because my SSN had been compromised. They sounded suspiciously like the same folks who left many messages telling me they were from the IRS. At least these newest scammers didn’t say that US Marshals were coming to arrest me. A friend of mine likes to call them back to chat — I just erase the messages. It gets awfully tiresome, though.
11I had one recent experience with a caller who identified himself – name, badge number – as from Medicare and went on to remind me that I had ignored their calls and I needed to verify who I am so they could send me the New Permanent Medicare Card. I told him that was a scam and he got very aggressive with me. I said that I would check with the official Medicare site. He never called back, and I DID check, and copied the actual memo from Medicare and reposted to public on my Facebook. BTW – there is NO plastic card, only paper. At 74 my shit detector is getting stronger every day.
12I hate it when I get phone calls asking who I’m voting for (when it’s not a survey but someone representing someone I’m not voting for) — where are we, behind the Iron Curtain?
13Sometimes when I get a call trying to sell me health insurance, Il see how long I can string along the scammer with pointless, stupid questions. One time when I called a guy out for some outrageous lie, he doubled down. Claimed he knew what he was talking about because he worked for the government. The “Department of Insurance”
14There’s a scene in a Danny Devito / Bette Midler movie (Ruthless People?) where he is talking to a policeman about his kidnapped wife, and gets a wrong number call. After obscenely insulting the caller he hangs up, smiles, and says to the cop “God, I love wrong numbers”.
I think these scam calls bring out the inner Danny Devito in all of us habitues of TWMDBS. And like most here, my goal is to keep them on the (speaker) phone as long as possible, with extra points if I can make THEM hang up on me. My record is just under 27 minutes.
15My God! these frauds are just soooooo rampant!!! Besides the ones about healthcare, if you own a car you will be getting all sorts of scary stuff. Recently got one allegedly from a well known car manufacturer about coverage on the engine etc. It came via the “dealership”. Well, it did not have a damn thing on it to identify my car such as the VIN. You would think that a car maker and dealer would have that data and use it in the form letter. Also, the envelope had a very sketchy return address: P. O. Box, city, state and zip only. No ownership like a car maker would use. Pitched it right away! You just have to be way too careful these days!
16Fierywoman @ 13,
I always give the enquiring-minds-want-to-know types a flat “Hell NO” and hang up on them.
Surly Professor @ 15,
My record time isn’t as good as yours. But twice I kept a microsoft scammer in a tizzy with my alternate phone personality, the demented lady, who only at the end of the conversation wants them to help her dig up her dead 2nd husband who is buried in the back yard. THEY hung up and never called back.
17Fortunately the car warranty people gave up on me. One more crappy thing to complain about is “your returned survey is being tracked”.
18Kudos, Papa, for turning the tables on those fraudsters.
19A few years ago, I got caller ID. What a great help it is to find out who is calling. I screen my calls with it, and if there is no name, just a number, I let it go to voicemail, and if they don’t say who they are or leave a message, too bad. If I don’t recognize the name, fuhgeddaboutit!
My son told me about an app called “norobo” which can fend off these types of calls too.
Wish I had the energy to “…dig up my second husband” though.
There’s a commercial that runs all day about the Medicare benefits “you may be entitled to,” decorated with red, white and blue design and featuring some actor dressed as a doctor. They never mention that you will have to pay for these supplemental benefits, they just give a toll-free number. I wonder how many people call, thus providing them with a phone number they can call and call and call…and I guess people fall for it, because it keep running.
20#11 Rubymay: I got a call yesterday from the “Social Security Administration” (from New Jersey, and a man with a heavy accent) saying there was a problem with my SSN at which point I hung up. I would have reported the number but I’ll bet it couldn’t be traced.
21About a year back, we were getting the “Microsoft Virus” scammers calling up. When Zimmerman finally got tired of it, the conversation we t something like this:
me: You know, my computer has been acting strangely lately. Whenever I try to log in, it makes a weird noise. Hang on a sec and I’ll show you. Listen carefully, it should happen around
There it is! So you can help
him:
me: Can you help
22Yikes, parts of my answer got cut off
“It should happen around…”
{Airhorn blast right into the mouthpiece}
“So you can help. .”
{Longer airhorn blast}
him:
23{Muffled swearing in unknown language & hangup}
Junk phone calls can be fun. You can lead them on then put the phone down “while looking for your wallet.” Or you can ask a highly inappropriate question, such as their underwear preferences.
The best way to weed out the snail mail that comes to you six days a week is to look at the upper right hand corner. Legit mail will have first class postage, either a stamp or something printed on the envelope. A utility bill, credit card statement or something from the government should have that.
Standard mail usually goes straight into the recycling bin.
24Another borderline scam, are sites, that in a search, rank or appear before the legitimate site. For example, a friend wound up paying $38 for a replacement Social Security card because he chose the wrong url. Another, exploitation is that of tax id numbers where the fraudsters make you pay for something that the legitimate site does for free. These sites commit fraud and they should be taken down.
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