Selling consumer data is old news with a new Medicare rule

Every year, the body governing Medicare in the United States, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), reviews the rules surrounding how you interact with Medicare. They add new rules to the game and clarify already existing ones. This keeps everything fair and safe for both agents and beneficiaries alike.

This year, the focus shifts to protecting your privacy. If you have been listening to the news lately, you definitely understand why. Data breaches are on the rise, and illegal cold contacts from call centers are causing confusion. Those call centers get your information from somewhere…

How it is now

When fall rolls around each year, you’re inundated with ads promising you Medicare benefits sounding too good to be true. And so maybe you call the number Joe Namath tells you to, or you fill out a form on a website, asking for more information.

In doing that, you might have consented to give some bad actors your contact information, and they’ll be selling it to the highest bidder.

When they do, you’ll be inundated with phone calls. The person on the other end of the line will ask if you’d like to add those benefits to your plan. As you agree and give more information, they’ll do the work to switch you into a new plan, which may not cover your doctors or drugs the same way as your current one.

What will change?

To combat this, CMS will now require you to participate in one-to-one consent. A practice already in place with the FCC for other types of business, this essentially means the businesses who reach out to you will gather your written permission to share your data with other agencies they work with, and only that agency. If they work with more than one, then you will have to sign more than one. If that entity does indeed sell data, that business will be required to get your permission to pass your info on to that third entity, too.

A top-notch agent, by the way, won’t be giving your information out, and if they work with a business that does ask permission to do so, would probably say, “Hey, where is that info going to? You don’t need to send my clients’ data anywhere else. Get out of here!”

So come this fall, when you might be changing plans or exploring Medicare for the first time, pay attention to how consent is collected when you are speaking to someone. The more times you have to sign consent, the more you should be suspicious of the interaction.

Let’s be crystal clear: you will still need to sign something called a Scope of Appointment even if your agent works completely solo. So don’t sound the alarm every time he pulls out a pen. But, if an email has you checking multiple boxes or asking your consent for a bunch of different things, ask why. Or, if the person on the phone can’t tell you about each one, it might be time to end the call or delete that email.

What changes at Action?

Those of you already working with us know this, but Action does not sell your data to anybody, ever. We, in fact, do every bit of our work in-house. Your information stays with us and the carriers providing your coverage. Your privacy stays safe with us.