Old Hotness: Nigerian Lottery Scams. New Hotness: ObamaCare Scams

It’s simply amazing that a piece of legislation that was unread by the people who voted for it, and is over 2,400 pages, should cause confusion. I mean, seriously, “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?” States Warn Of Obamacare scams

In Illinois, a telemarketer recently sold an elderly woman a fraudulent health insurance plan that supposedly protected her against “death panels,” the state insurance director says.

In Alabama, a con artist has been offering “government health care reform” insurance over the phone in exchange for customers’ bank account numbers, according to the local Better Business Bureau.

And in Kansas, law enforcement authorities are investigating reports of people identifying themselves as government employees and taking payments for “Obamacare” insurance.

Con artists in several states are seizing on the public’s financial struggles and confusion about the recent health care overhaul, the authorities say. So far, the frauds appear to be relatively infrequent and are often no more sophisticated than spam fax messages with blatant misspellings and no company letterhead.

The problem with the bill – well, one of them – is that the bill is so huge, so unwieldy, and so bureaucratic, that even the elected officials won’t even understand it. Most people who have paid attention understand certain portions, typically ones that are of interest to them. They also understand that it is the first step towards single payer, ie, fully government run health insurance. You can expect that these kinds of scams will continue, and probably increase. There are always suckers out there. The “you’ve won this money!” and other scammers wouldn’t continue to do it if there weren’t people out in the big goofy world who were still falling for them.

BTW, it seems that the Grey Lady hasn’t received the memo that “Obamacare” is now a derogatory word. It’ll soon be considered raaaaacist.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach

Share this!

Enjoy reading? Share it with your friends!