How to stop Medicare sales calls and robocalls

If you are on Medicare, or about to be, your phone rings more from October to December than the rest of the year. That is Annual Enrollment, and a lot of people are selling into it. Some of the calls are from real companies breaking the rules. Some are scams. More of them every year are a recording, or a computer-made voice that sounds like a person.

You can cut most of them off in an afternoon. None of it costs anything.

Sign up for both no-call lists

You want two lists, one federal and one for Colorado.

The National Do Not Call Registry. Go to DoNotCall.gov, or call 1-888-382-1222 (TTY 1-866-290-4236) from the phone you want on the list. Online, you can add up to three numbers at a time, and each one sends you an email with a link you have to click within 72 hours. If you don't click it, the number is not registered.

Your number shows up on the list the next day, but sales calls can take up to 31 days to stop. The registration never expires, so there is nothing to renew. Somebody who calls offering to renew it, or to sign you up, is running a scam.

The Colorado No-Call List. Go to coloradonocall.com, or call 1-800-309-7041. It asks only for your phone number and ZIP code, with no email to confirm. It covers home phones and cell phones.

The Colorado list is slower. Telemarketers get a new copy four times a year, so a number you add takes effect at the end of the month after the quarter closes. Sign up in November and it starts January 31. Colorado copies in the numbers Coloradans put on the federal list, and the state's Public Utilities Commission still recommends signing up for both.

If you are signing up a parent, do it with them. Colorado's list says it is against the law to add somebody's number without their permission. There is more on helping a parent below.

What the lists stop, and what they don't

The lists tell companies that follow the law not to call you. They do not block anything, so a scammer who is already breaking the law keeps calling. Political calls, charities, surveys and debt collectors are also still allowed, as long as they are not selling you something.

A company you have done business with recently can still call you. Tell it to stop and it has to. Write down the date you told it.

The rule that tells you a call is not legit

Medicare's own rules forbid Medicare Advantage and Part D drug plans, and the agents who sell them, from calling you out of the blue. That covers cold calls, robocalls, texts and voicemails, including calls "based on a referral." It is in 42 CFR 422.2264, and it is the rule we work under too. An agent may call you only if you asked them to: you called first, filled out a form asking for a call, or booked a time.

So if a stranger calls about your Medicare Advantage or drug plan and you never asked to hear from them, they have already told you what kind of company they are.

Medicare Supplement (Medigap) policies are regulated by the state rather than by Medicare, so a Medigap sales call falls under the no-call lists instead of this rule. The lists still apply.

And Medicare itself does not call to sell you anything, and does not call to ask for your Medicare number. Caller ID can be faked to say "Medicare." If you are not sure, hang up and call 1-800-MEDICARE yourself.

Where many of these calls start

A lot of Medicare sales calls begin with something the person did without knowing it would end in a phone call: dialing the number in a TV ad about "extra benefits you may be owed," or filling out a "see what you qualify for" form online. Many of those forms exist to collect names and numbers to sell to call centers. Once your number is sold, it can be sold again.

Before you fill out a form like that, look for whose form it is and what they do with your number. Ours is in our privacy policy: we don't sell your information, not to lead brokers and not to anyone else.

Turn on the screening your phone already has

Your phone can ask unknown callers who they are before it rings.

• iPhone with iOS 26: Settings, then Apps, then Phone, then Screen Unknown Callers. "Ask Reason for Calling" has the phone answer for you and shows you what the caller said. On an older iPhone, look under Phone in Settings for Silence Unknown Callers, which sends unknown numbers straight to voicemail.
• Google Pixel: Call Screen, in the Phone app's settings, answers unknown calls for you.
• Other Android phones: open the Phone app's settings and look for caller ID and spam protection.
• Your carrier: wireless carriers have their own call-blocking options. The FTC points to ctia.org for a list. For a landline, call your phone company and ask what blocking it offers.

Real callers, like your doctor's office or your pharmacy, will leave a message or answer the screening question. Robocalls usually hang up.

If one gets through

• Hang up. You don't owe a caller a polite goodbye.
• Don't press a number "to be removed from our list" or "to speak to a representative." The FTC says that can bring more calls.
• Don't call back a number you don't recognize, especially after a call that rang once and stopped. Some of those numbers charge you for the call.
• Don't confirm anything: not your name, not your birthday, not your Medicare number. Don't say "yes" to a question you didn't expect.
• If it was a robocall selling something, it was illegal unless you gave that company written permission. In 2024 the Federal Communications Commission ruled that a computer-made voice counts as an artificial voice under the robocall law, so a call that sounds like a real person and is not one needs that same permission.

Report it

• You didn't lose money: report the call at DoNotCall.gov. Include the number on your caller ID even if you think it was faked, and the date and time.
• You lost money or gave out information: report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
• Somebody asked for your Medicare number, or you think it was used: call 1-800-MEDICARE.
• You are on the Colorado list and still getting sales calls: file a complaint with Colorado No-Call.

The FTC won't answer each report, but the numbers people report go to the phone companies every business day, and that is how blocking gets better.

If your parent is the one getting the calls

If you are the son or daughter of somebody on Medicare, you may be the one who hears about these calls, or picks up the phone at their house. An hour with them, in person or on a video call, covers most of it.

• Sign up their numbers with them. Both lists, every phone they use, home and cell. If you register online, the confirmation email can go to whichever inbox gets opened, yours or theirs.
• Turn on call screening on their phone, and add the numbers that have to get through to their contacts first: you, their doctors, their pharmacy, their Medicare plan, and us if we are their agents. Screening waves contacts through, so a call from the pharmacy doesn't end up in voicemail.
• Write one rule down and tape it by the phone: "I don't give my Medicare number, Social Security number or bank information to anybody who called me. I hang up and call them back at a number I look up myself."
• Agree on a line to say instead of yes. "Send it to me in writing" ends most sales calls without a fight, and a real company can do it.
• Look at their Medicare mail together. The Medicare Summary Notice, or the plan's statement, lists what was billed under their number. A service or a piece of equipment they never got is worth a call to 1-800-MEDICARE.
• Tell them they can always say "let me ask my son" or "let me ask my daughter" and hang up. Somebody legitimate will wait. Somebody who pushes to keep them on the line has answered the question.

If you use an AI assistant, you can run the next section for them, with their phone number and their say-so.

Letting an AI assistant do the paperwork

This part is optional. If you already use an AI assistant, it can do most of the steps above for you, and one more that is tedious by hand: asking people-search websites to take your phone number down. Those sites publish names, ages, addresses and phone numbers, and each one has its own removal form.

Four assistants could do this kind of work as of November 2026:

• Meta's Muse, which has a free version and works inside WhatsApp, and can now make phone calls for you as well as fill out forms.
• Anthropic's Claude Duet, which works with your email and calendar. It is part of a paid plan and was still opening by waitlist.
• OpenAI's ChatGPT Dots, which runs its own web browser to fill out forms. It is part of ChatGPT's most expensive plans.
• xAI's Grok Bot, which also runs its own web browser to fill out forms. xAI announced in late October that it can make phone calls too.

We tried it ourselves in November. We asked Muse to put our number on the Do Not Call list and take it off "all the other marketing sites." It finished the National Do Not Call Registry, and removal requests at TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch and PeopleFinders, confirmation emails included. Spokeo blocked it, so that one has to be done by hand. When we asked for a report, it also told us what it never tried: Whitepages, BeenVerified, Radaris and ThatsThem. And we hadn’t thought to ask for the Colorado list.

So name the sites, and ask for the report. Something like:

"Add my phone number, (your number), to the National Do Not Call Registry and the Colorado No-Call List. Then submit removal requests for my phone number to TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch, PeopleFinders, Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, Radaris and ThatsThem. When you're done, tell me which ones worked, which ones didn't, and anything I still need to confirm."

A few things to know before you try it:

• Check the confirmation emails. The federal list and most removal forms send a link you have to click. An assistant that reads your email may click them for you. One that doesn't, can't, so look for them yourself.
• Check the result. At DoNotCall.gov you can verify that your number is registered. Search your own name on a people-search site a few days later.
• Expect to do it again. People-search sites are known to put a listing back up when they find new information. Once or twice a year is a good habit.
• Never give an assistant your Medicare number, Social Security number or bank information. None of these steps needs them. A phone number and an email address are all it takes.
• In Muse, turn off model training under Data Controls in its settings, if you would rather your chats not be used to train Meta's AI.

We don't make cold calls

We are licensed Medicare agents, and we follow the rules. We don't call people who haven't asked to hear from us. If you would like to talk about your Medicare plan before December 7, book a time or call us, and we will be the call you were expecting.