GoHealth Class Action Says Insurance Telemarketing Calls Violate TCPA

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A class action lawsuit filed by a Texas woman says GoHealth has been conducting a telemarketing campaign that violates federal law.

Plaintiff Debra Rafano says GoHealth LLC has been placing automatically-dialed calls and calls using a prerecorded announcement to cell phone customers who never consented to being called that way or who had told GoHealth to stop calling.

Rafano alleges these calls violate the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA.

While GoHealth holds itself out as a broker for consumers in the market for health insurance, Rafano says the company is merely a lead generator that gathers consumer leads and sells them to insurance agents and actual insurance brokers. The company offers its “BrokerDialer” service to brokers and agents as a way to “[c]ontact more prospects in less time”.

Rafano alleges that in making these calls, GoHealth fails to obtain the prior express written consent required by the TCPA. The company also ignores call recipient’s express requests not to be called, she claims.

Call recipients have responded to GoHealth telemarketing with a wave of online complaints, Rafano says. She quotes complaints registered on website 800notes.com from persons who say they get several calls per day from GoHealth’s phone number, often without leaving a voicemail or responding when the called person picks up.

Rafano further claims that GoHealth does not bother to check its database against the National Do Not Call Registry. Telemarketers have the option of “scrubbing” their call list against the Do Not Call Registry, or to hire a third-party service to do so, Rafano says.

But GoHealth allegedly doesn’t bother to check the Do Not Call Registry before placing calls, as evidenced by the number of persons like Rafano who report receiving GoHealth calls after signing up for the registry.

Rafano says she registered her own mobile phone number with the Do Not Call Registry in February 2014. She says she started receiving calls from GoHealth in November 2015, soliciting her to get quotes for health insurance.

These calls used a prerecorded message telling Rafano to stay on the line to speak to a live operator. During the first call, Rafano says, she told the live operator she wasn’t interested in health insurance and that she didn’t want to be called again.

But the calls kept coming, she says. During several subsequent calls, Rafano says, she asked live operators to stop calling and also used the automatic voice prompts system to opt out of future calls. Yet the GoHealth calls didn’t stop, she says.

Rafano proposes to represent four different plaintiff Classes, all of whom would consist of persons who received calls from GoHealth that allegedly violate the TCPA.

Two Classes would cover those persons who received calls with pre-recorded messages and who either did not give GoHealth prior express consent or who continued to receive such calls after telling GoHealth to stop.

The other two Classes would cover similarly situated plaintiffs whose phone numbers were on the Do Not Call Registry at the time they were called.

Rafano seeks an award of the greater of actual or statutory damages under the TCPA and court orders that would curb GoHealth’s telemarketing practices.

The plaintiff is represented by attorneys Steven L. Woodrow of Woodrow & Peluso LLC and Stefan Coleman of the Law Offices of Stefan Coleman PA.

The GoHealth Telemarketing Class Action Lawsuit is Debra Rafano v. GoHealth LLC, Case No. 1:16-cv-10272, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

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If you were contacted on your cell phone by a company via an unsolicited text message (text spam) or prerecorded voice message (robocall), you may be eligible for compensation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

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