Obamacare Scams and the Need For a Public Search Engine ❧ Current Affairs

If you are looking to buy an ACA-compliant health insurance plan, there is a good chance the first thing you might do is google “Obamacare” or “ACA plans.” And if you do, you will be given a page of results that looks something like this:

If you click one of these links, you may be taken to a site like Obamacareplans.com that contains the logos of many legitimate insurance companies. It will promise to set you up with an insurance plan, if you give it your information. But if you look closely, you will find a small disclaimer indicating that the company is not affiliated with the government or these insurance companies. You will also find the even more worrying disclaimer that just by entering your phone number and email address you “authorize Quotelab, LLC, and one or more of Kaiser Permanente, and/or these marketing partners to contact you for marketing/telemarketing purposes at the number, email address and address provided above, including your wireless number if provided, using live operators, automated telephone dialing systems, pre-recorded messages, artificial voice, text messages and/or emails, even if the number you provide is on a state or Federal Do Not Call registry.”

This is not an idle threat. Better Business Bureau reviews for the company (also known as MediaAlpha) reveal that not only may you be called, but you may be called all the time. Some sample testimonials: 

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