Iberia Parish School District retirees are being put out of their insurance coverage due to telemarketing calls.

Benefit Service Representative for DJW Insurance Kim Clay said that several cases have popped up in the past month of retirees taking phone calls from telemarketers who are advertising insurance coverage for the retirees.

At some point in the call, Clay said the retirees inadvertently give a verbal agreement to change insurance providers, which removes them from enrollment in the insurance provided by the Iberia Parish School District and signs them up with another provider.

“It could happen to anyone,” Clay said. “We dealt with two cases of this happening in February and one has already happened in March.”

Clay said some of the retirees will listen to the pitch of the new insurance plan and give a verbal agreement, which allows the new provider to remove them from the insurance already provided by the school board.

The new insurance is not as comprehensive as the school district plan and sometimes requires large out of pocket costs, unbeknownst to the retirees when they agreed to the change on the phone.

“Our retirees who are eligible or on a group advantage plan designed for school board retirees with little to no out of pocket costs,” Clay said.

The Medicare advantage plans that are promoted to the retirees say they offer benefits like meals and transportation to doctor’s appointments. However, the retirees are not told about the limited networks of the plan, high out-of-pocket costs and HMO networks that might not even have a doctor in the area that accepts.

Clay said the issue has led to DJW Insurance, the insurance provider for the school board, having to do investigative work to figure out the insurance plan the retiree has switched to in order to change back to the original coverage. The agency is able to switch them back, fortunately, but only beginning the next month.

“We had one retiree who suffered a stroke when they changed the plan, and now has to pay those costs because it was during that month,” Clay said.

The Iberia Parish School Board currently covers almost 900 retirees. Clay cautioned that anyone receiving health care coverage should be extremely careful when contacted by telemarketers who are offering a new insurance plan.

Clay said there have been cases in the past where the new insurance agency will demand written proof from the retiree to show that they want to change back to their original insurance provider, despite the fact that they had agreed to the new plan with verbal consent on the telephone.

In several past cases the retiree was unaware that their coverage had changed at all, with Clay saying her agency had to do extra work to figure out where and to whom the coverage was changed.

Medicare and health care telemarketing scams are frequently listed as one of the most dangerous for elderly people.