"Real Medicare cards are free and mailed to you automatically"
The FTC publishes a Medicare Open Enrollment warning every autumn, and the 30 September 2025 edition contains the single most useful sentence in the whole category: real Medicare cards are free and mailed automatically. Anybody who calls offering a new or updated one, and asks for a number to process it, has identified themselves.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Medicare and health insurance scams, Government impersonation, Phishing and smishing
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- The FTC published the alert on 30 September 2025, ahead of the Medicare Open Enrollment Period that runs from 15 October to 7 December.
- Scammers impersonate Medicare and contact people unexpectedly, sounding professional and often already holding some of their personal information.
- A common pretext is that the person needs a "new" or "updated" Medicare card, followed by a request for a Medicare, bank account or credit card number.
- The FTC's answer: real Medicare cards are free and are mailed to you automatically.
- Medicare will only ask you to verify information if you contacted Medicare first.
- Caller ID can show Medicare's name or phone number and cannot be trusted; the FTC advises hanging up and calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).
- The FTC directs people to their State Health Insurance Assistance Program and to Medicare.gov for genuine help, and to the Senior Medicare Patrol at smpresource.org.
- HHS-OIG maintains parallel consumer alerts on medical identity theft, remote patient monitoring enrolment and fraud targeting people with diabetes.
Why this case matters
Most scam advice is a list of things to be careful about, which is another way of saying it gives the reader work to do and no way of knowing when they have done enough.
This alert contains something better — a single verifiable fact that resolves the most common version of the scam without any judgement at all:
Real Medicare cards are free and mailed to you automatically.
If somebody has called about issuing you a new or updated card, the conversation is over. Not suspicious: over. There is no legitimate version of that call.
The seasonal shape
Medicare Open Enrollment runs from 15 October to 7 December, and the FTC publishes a version of this warning every year in advance of it — 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
That regularity is the finding. Scam volume in this category is not steady; it concentrates in an eight-week window when millions of older Americans are legitimately expecting to be contacted about their health cover, and when an unexpected call about a plan is genuinely plausible.
The same seasonality applies to every scheme that hides inside a real deadline — tax season, holiday delivery, storm season. The scam does not have to be convincing if it arrives at the moment the real thing does.
What the FTC says the tells are
Unexpected contact. Medicare will only ask you to verify information if you contacted Medicare first. That reverses the usual burden and makes the test simple: who started this?
A displayed number that says Medicare. The alert states plainly that caller ID can be faked and should not be trusted. Hang up and call 1-800-MEDICARE.
Personal details you did not give them. The FTC notes callers may already have some of your information. That is a consequence of data breaches, not evidence of authority — and it is the single most persuasive element in the whole approach.
Where to go instead
The alert names three routes, and the second is not widely known:
- 1-800-MEDICARE to check whether a call was real, and to report a Medicare scam.
- Your State Health Insurance Assistance Program, which provides free, unbiased counselling on plan choices — the actual alternative to taking advice from whoever called.
- The Senior Medicare Patrol at smpresource.org, and the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
The reason to name the second one is that “hang up on people who call about Medicare” leaves a real need unmet. People are choosing a plan, and they do want help. Telling them where the free, impartial help is makes the advice usable instead of merely defensive.
Sources
- This Medicare Open Enrollment season, learn how to protect yourself from scams. US Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Advice. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The 30 September 2025 alert, the enrolment dates, the new-card pretext, the free-and-automatic rule, the caller ID warning and every reporting route named.
- Consumer Alerts. US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The parallel HHS-OIG alerts on medical identity theft, remote patient monitoring and fraud targeting people with diabetes.
- Medicare Impersonators. US Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Advice. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The FTC's standing guidance on Medicare impersonation.