SAN ANTONIO – Scammers know an opportunity to make money when they see one: they just might be taking advantage of all the confusion over health insurance.
The Better Business Bureau says this is just the first round – with two years until health care reform is fully in place, scammers have plenty of time to make an easy score off hard-working business people.
From an office in Boerne, Shawn Fluitt and his staff run Timekeepers Inc. and Tier One Security Management, companies that manage oilfield security guards.
http://liarcatchers.com/insurance_fraud.html
Like other small businesses, not everyone receives health benefits.
“Most of our field employees are over 50,” Fluitt says. “They’re full-time RV’ers that come in from all over the country for the winter.”
Fluitt says no one can tell him if he’ll have to offer insurance to all employees.
“Very confusing,” he says. “We don’t have a clue. We don’t know how to make a plan.”
Making it even more complicated, scammers are now trying to make a buck off the confusion.
“Anything new and different, this is usually when we see the scammers,” Kristi Pena with the Better Business Bureau says.
She says the sales pitches often promise great deals on health insurance but are short on details like a business address or even a website.
“They’re going to use this time frame before everything is explained, before we can completely understand what’s going on – they’re going to just saturate the market,” Pena says.
Fluitt says health care reform could cost small business a lot, so he’d hate to see someone rip off owners like him.
“We’re very careful about that kind of stuff,” he says. “We don’t just go flying off the handle to hire someone like that. But if somebody were not really careful about that, you could get stung.”
The FBI says health care fraud costs the country $80 billion a year.
The BBB says don’t just trash emails, faxes or voicemails that look like health insurance scams – turn them in through the BBB’s website.
