Don’t Call Me!
By Hank Silverberg

Many people have to make a key decision in the next few months. No, not which one of the two dozen Presidential candidates they want to support. That may be easier than choosing what type of Medicare plan they want and whether to buy a supplemental policy to cover things Medicare doesn’t. (If you are under 60, you may want to just skip this part and go to my “News Notes” section below. )

I am far from an expert on Medicare, so don’t look for any advice from me on which plan is best for you. I’m still learning. 

But I am also getting very annoyed. I looked things up on line, but I always want a human being to back up what I have read to make sure I understand it. That is especially true on something like this where my health care is concerned. The folks on the official Medicare phone line were actually very good. I got what I needed in a single phone call. The one thing they made clear is that I should sign up for Medicare about three months before my 65^th birthday. 


And that brings me to the focus of this edition of “Time to Think” The dreaded ROBO-CALL.

Normally I would not write about my age or personal decisions but from the calls I have been getting it seems that everybody knows a lot about me already. For several weeks I have been receiving DOZENS of calls on both my home phone (Yes, I still have one) and my cell phone, from companies trying to sell me a supplemental plan. It’s called Medigap by the marketers. Most of the time the phone call begins “Hi, I’m Mary calling you on a recorded line. Are you having a good day?”HiHH Hi

(My land line has been ringing off
the hook with robocalls)  

Now I don’t know what marketing genius came up with this approach but it doesn’t work.  There is no way I am going to talk to a machine where my voice is recorded. In fact, this is a tactic used by some nasty scammers.  If you answer that first question with the word “Yes” all it takes is some tight digital editing and they now have your approval for any request they might make. “May we sell your first born?” And there’s your voice saying “Yes”.

So that’s an automatic disconnect from me.After the first few of these calls I gave up waiting for the part that says “You can opt out of future calls by pressing 9.”

On occasion there is an actual living person on the other end of the phone who seems to know more about me than my mother.  And from that person I am told I must sign up for a supplemental plan right now to lock in the lower rates, even though I won’t be 65 until the end of the year. They sound very much like the guy trying to get you to refinance your mortgage at a lower rate, even though your current rate is less than he is offering. Sorry, I'm not buying it. The hard sell approach falls on deaf ears for me and that person usually hears me hanging up fast.

Now, I know you are thinking “okay, just block the number and they can’t call again” But that doesn’t work. Try calling back one of those numbers and a recording will tell you it’s a non-working number. These companies use what is called a “shadow” phone number.  I don’t know details on the technology behind that, but it’s very common with most telemarketers. You can’t block them because they will just use another shadow number the next time they call.  

It used to be these kind of pitch calls all came in around dinner time, but now with cell phones so prevalent, they come all day long. I got one on my cell phone as late as ten p-m. In the last two weeks I have gotten more than 60 of these calls. At least that’s where I stopped counting and that was after opting out on the first dozen or so, and verbally telling a few live callers that I was not interested.  The first few “no thank you” responses were nice. After that I got snarly.

I finally did have an extensive phone conversation with one salesman who claimed to be a former Major League Baseball player (The name and details were right but I am not sure it was actually the former ballplayer).

He was pretty good in explaining it all and I may eventually buy something but I asked him to send me a detailed email and call me back in a few months. He was okay with that, so we shall see.

The bottom line, there is a message here. Hang up on machines with recorded calls, never answer a question with the word “Yes” that may be recorded and used for some other purpose later, and if you are selling “supplemental medical insurance”, don’t call me. I’ll call you when I am ready. If telemarketing is your business then too bad. These tactics are a big turnoff.

News Notes:

There were two others things worth noting this week. This past Friday, May 3^rd was “Press Freedom Day”. It was not ignored, but May the 4^th, “Star Wars Day”, got more attention.  We take a free press for granted. The First Amendment protects American freedom, but many places in the world have nothing like it. Ninety-Nine journalist were killed doing their jobs in the last year and 348 are imprisoned by governments. All this is exacerbated by the growing menace of “Fake News” and by politicians worldwide who use that label to attack real journalists. The map below shows you that the United States is ranked only "satisfactory" in press freedom, less than most of the countries in Scandinavia.   

https://apnews.com/9591968b2a804c009a04da9edc8dc6f0


Your job as a citizen is to support real journalists doing important work, and avoid spreading “fake news”. It is often supported or promoted by foreign governments seeking to destroy democracy. (There were some examples from 2016 in the Mueller report, but don’t get me started on that or you will be reading all day.)

 https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf


The second thing of note this week,  was a decision by Facebook to ban some right-wing conspiracy theorists and hate mongers.  All of a sudden there was an outcry from people shouting “it’s a violation of free speech, and the First Amendment” all squealing about bias.

Sorry folks. The First Amendment is specifically designed to prevent GOVERNMENT interference of free speech, the press or religion. Facebook is a private company which can if it wants, ban ANYONE from using its platform. Twitter and other social media fall under the same category. It’s the same concept as the one that allows some religious institutions to ban contraception from their health care plans. 

Ironically, it was conservative court challenges to ObamaCare in recent years which firmed up this principal.

Also ridiculous is the charge that the ban is aimed only at “conservatives”. Poppycock. It’s aimed at people who spread far out, fictional conspiracy theories (really fake news) and promote violence and hate as a means of political outrage. To clarify, this is the company making these decision to ban them, , not the government. These people or groups have been using Facebook to attack minorities and immigrants, spread fear, self promote themselves or just make a dirty buck by exploiting the country's polarized politics. They can still do that on the street corner if they want. Nobody has taken their free speech away. Their place on the political spectrum, right or left is irrelevant.


                      (Your comments and suggestions are welcome.)

                                            

(Copies of my book are available at Amazon.com, BB.com or hanksilverbergbooks.com. Or you can purchase a signed copy at a reduced price by emailing me at hanksilverberg@gmail.com)