A sick person typed their cancer diagnosis, their income, their home address, and their phone number into what looked like an official U.S. government health insurance website — and MediaAlpha auctioned that information off to the highest bidder within seconds.

The Setup: A Billion-Dollar Fake Government

MediaAlpha, Inc. and its operating arm QuoteLab, LLC operate out of Los Angeles, California. In public filings, the company called itself the “largest online customer acquisition channel” in the health, property, casualty, and life insurance industries. In 2024, 119 million leads were sold through its platform, generating $1.5 billion in gross transaction value and $865 million (enough to provide health insurance for roughly 173,000 American families for an entire year) in direct revenue.

The company runs what the FTC describes as dozens of deceptive lead generation websites. Domain names include ObamacarePlans.com, GovernmentHealthInsurance.com, Biden-Care.com, Trump-Healthcare-Plans.com, KentuckyHealthPlans.org, ConnecticutHealthPlans.org, HealthExchangeQuotes.com, and ObamacareUSA.com. The names are designed to make real Americans — people who genuinely need health insurance — believe they have landed on an official government resource.

They have not. Every one of these sites is a data collection trap. MediaAlpha sells nothing. It harvests your information, packages it, and auctions it off to telemarketers who then call you until you break.

The Machine Runs on Your Fear of Being Uninsured

The FTC’s complaint explains exactly why this scheme works: millions of Americans who cannot get health insurance through an employer are desperately searching online for affordable plans. MediaAlpha spent millions of dollars placing its fake-government ads at the very top of Google search results — often four positions above the actual federal marketplace at HealthCare.gov — when people searched for terms like “Obamacare,” “Medicaid,” “marketplace insurance,” and even “healthcare gov.”

One Google ad for MediaAlpha’s Obamacare-Plans.com appeared above the real federal marketplace link when users searched for “aca insurance.” The ad promised plans from “$1 per day” and a “Quick and Easy Eligibility Process.” Since 2018, over 18 million people clicked through MediaAlpha’s Google text ads to just two of its many sites: ObamacarePlans.com and Obamacare-Plans.com.

A single ad for KentuckyHealthPlans.org — a fake state-specific insurance portal — generated over 200,000 clicks. That is 200,000 people in Kentucky who thought they were accessing their state’s health insurance marketplace. They were not.

The Numbers That Should Make You Furious

How the Con Actually Works: Step by Step

The FTC complaint lays out the mechanics in precise, damning detail. MediaAlpha built a multi-step funnel that traps people who need healthcare coverage. It starts with an ad — disguised as government outreach — and ends with your phone ringing dozens of times per day from strangers selling junk insurance products.

Step 1: The Hook Looks Official

MediaAlpha’s advertising videos featured clips of sitting U.S. presidents speaking about healthcare. One video used former President Biden stating that “4 out of 5 Americans shopping on the Obamacare marketplace can get quality health care with a premium of $10 a month or less” — making viewers believe MediaAlpha was part of that government program. The company paid celebrities including Floyd Mayweather to endorse a fictional “Health Insurance Give Back Program.” It paid Dr. Jacqueline Darna, a licensed anesthesiologist assistant, to appear in scripted “advertorials” on news programs — where a news station logo appeared on screen — to give the appearance of legitimate medical endorsement. MediaAlpha’s own scripts told Dr. Darna to say she “recommended Defendants’ services to her patients.” She had never used MediaAlpha’s sites.

MediaAlpha ran ads claiming the government approved “FREE HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS,” complete with a fake prop letter featuring a fake insurance card and fake “cash benefits” banner. Actors held up these prop approval letters on camera. The text on screen said: “If you sign up today, the government will give you a full coverage policy for only $10/month, which includes FREE copays, FREE check-ups, FREE treatments.”

Step 2: The Website Collects Everything

Once someone clicks through, the site presents itself as a standard plan comparison tool — the FTC complaint cites internal MediaAlpha documents describing the sites as letting consumers “compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans, side-by-side, the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak [or] a TV on Amazon.” The site displays logos of real major insurers like Kaiser Permanente, Aetna, Anthem, and UnitedHealthcare. It shows an urgent countdown timer. It asks for a zip code to “see plans.”

Then the funnel demands more. Step by step, MediaAlpha’s forms collect: date of birth, gender, height, weight, whether the consumer is pregnant or adopting, serious health conditions including cancer, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, bipolar disorder, and kidney failure, tobacco use, household income, household size, home address, phone number, and email. The final screen shows a button that says “See Plans and Prices” or “See My Options.”

Clicking that button shows no plans. No prices. It shows a page of ads for other lead generators, with a fake “scarcity timer” counting down until a non-existent “pre-approval” expires and a claim that “301 people have called today.” Every click sends the consumer deeper into another data collection loop.

Step 3: The Calls Start Immediately

The moment a consumer submits the form, MediaAlpha begins robocalling them. Simultaneously, the company sells that consumer’s data — health history, income, address, phone number — to multiple “demand partners” as a “shared lead.” Those telemarketers all race to call the same person at the same time. MediaAlpha’s own internal notes acknowledged the practice leaves consumers “feeling bombarded by all lead buyers trying to call them at the exact same time.”

The FTC found that two Florida telemarketer partners alone called numbers across multiple states hundreds of thousands of times between March 2023 and March 2024. One of those telemarketers called most of its targets at least 11 times. The other called several consumers over 100 times each. In 2023 alone, over 171,000 consumers submitted do-not-contact requests generated by MediaAlpha’s platform. Since 2018, over one million of MediaAlpha’s robocalls went to numbers already registered on the National Do Not Call Registry.

Step 4: The Insurance They Sell Is Fake

MediaAlpha’s telemarketer partners rarely sold the ACA-qualified comprehensive health insurance the ads promised. As of April 2024, one of MediaAlpha’s major telemarketer demand partners had never sold a single ACA-qualified plan to anyone — ever. Instead, both partners sold non-comprehensive “limited benefit” plans, short-term plans, and health sharing arrangements, which the FTC describes as costing “over $200 per month.” A limited benefit plan might pay only $1,000 per hospital day, or $3,000 total for a three-day hospital stay. The average total cost of a three-day hospital stay in the United States is approximately $30,000 ($30,000 — more than most Americans earn in a single month after taxes). The remaining $27,000 falls entirely on the patient.

MediaAlpha knew this. The FTC complaint documents that MediaAlpha repeatedly encouraged these same telemarketers to increase their bids for leads generated on its “Obamacare” sites — even knowing those telemarketers had never sold a real Obamacare plan to anyone.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Fix

A woman typed her phone number into what she believed was an official government health insurance portal. Within minutes, her phone started ringing. By the end of the first day, she had received 50 calls. By the next day, 20 more. The telemarketers called from different numbers, so blocking one made no difference. When she asked them to stop, they told her they “refuse[d] to honor” her do-not-call request. She submitted a formal complaint through MediaAlpha’s own website. The calls kept coming. MediaAlpha’s manager forwarded her complaint to colleagues under the subject line: “Another happy customer.”

That was not an isolated incident. That manager’s casual mockery of a desperate person captures everything about how MediaAlpha viewed the people it harmed. The FTC complaint documents consumer after consumer experiencing the same siege: 47 calls in a single day. 80 calls total. Phone lines so clogged with unwanted solicitations that people could not call their own families. Could not receive emergency calls. One consumer wrote: “I began to submit my personal information to your website obamacareplans.com thinking it legitimately represented the official healthcare service of the United States. In three days I have received at least 30 phone calls because of your website. I can’t even use my phone to call my family or for emergency because your robo callers and telemarketers are calling me non-stop.”

People did everything right. They tried to opt out. They called back and begged. They submitted do-not-contact requests through the website. MediaAlpha’s response was to send a form email saying the consumer “may need to make a similar request of anyone who contacts you” — as if the responsibility for stopping hundreds of unwanted calls belonged to the person being harassed. MediaAlpha knew its demand partners often ignored those requests and kept selling leads anyway. The complaint documents one woman who repeatedly asked for the calls to stop, received assurances from MediaAlpha that partners would be notified, and then reported three more unwanted calls on the very same day those assurances were given.

Then there is the internal moment that crystallizes the company’s contempt for its own victims. In 2023, a MediaAlpha manager accidentally entered her real phone number while testing the company’s mobile site. She described the experience as “the unthinkable.” A senior director responsible for compliance joked that she should “get a new number.” A senior manager reacted “holy cannoli.” A company vice president responded “WOW.” These were people who built and ran the system. They understood, in real time, that submitting your phone number to their own product was a catastrophe. They found it funny. They never changed the system. They went back to selling other people’s phone numbers the next morning.

The harm extended beyond harassment into genuine, life-altering medical catastrophe. Consumers who went through MediaAlpha’s funnel and got connected to telemarketers were sold products described in writing as “not major medical” insurance. When one telemarketer’s form showed that language, the telemarketer told the consumer that was only because they had “removed three major liabilities from the plan” — meaning coverage for maternity, substance abuse, and mental health had been stripped out. Another telemarketer told a consumer a written disclosure describing their purchase as “a supplement to health insurance” was just because the plan did not cover psychiatric or substance abuse treatment. These were not misunderstandings. These were scripts designed to prevent people from understanding that what they were buying would fail them when they needed it most.

People who got sick discovered the reality. A limited benefit plan might pay $1,000 per hospital day — $3,000 for a three-day stay. The average three-day stay costs $30,000 ($30,000 — the equivalent of nearly seven months of rent for the average American). The $27,000 difference becomes the patient’s personal debt. Medical debt is the leading driver of personal bankruptcy in the United States. MediaAlpha did not just sell a bad product. It built a pipeline that funneled vulnerable, uninsured people toward financial ruin, collected its $865 million ($865 million — the equivalent of 23,000 Americans’ entire annual income), and called the customer acquisition “channel” it built a market leader.

Legal Receipts: The Company’s Own Words

“Defendants actually sell consumers nothing. Instead, after harvesting consumers’ personal and contact information, Defendants auction it off to telemarketers and other lead generators. Defendants also robocall the consumers, and when they are able to get someone on the phone, they sell access to the ‘live’ call to their telemarketer partners.” — FTC v. MediaAlpha, Inc., Federal Complaint, Paragraph 3

“A MediaAlpha lead sales manager has conceded that consumers may be ‘confused with [Defendants’] sites thinking they were calling for gov[ernmen]t ass[is]t[ance] through healthcare.gov but [Defendants] are not affiliated,’ and ‘Obamacareplans.com sound[s] like it could be gov[ernmen]t related but it’s not.'” — FTC v. MediaAlpha, Inc., Federal Complaint, Paragraph 66

“One of Defendants’ senior directors indicated that they should ‘def[initely] go smaller…much smaller lol’ on the disclaimer, and reacted with a ‘joy’ emoji when a manager responded that the government affiliation disclaimer should be ‘barely legible.'” — FTC v. MediaAlpha, Inc., Federal Complaint, Paragraph 70 — describing internal communications about legally required disclosures

“One of Defendants’ senior directors has recommended that Defendants’ marketing emails to consumers should appear to come from a business partner rather than from Defendants’ website they visited, because that could make it more likely consumers would click through, given consumers’ ‘negative’ view of Defendants after receiving ‘[a]ll those calls from when they signed up’ on Defendants’ site.” — FTC v. MediaAlpha, Inc., Federal Complaint, Paragraph 55

“A large supply partner that provides high lead volume ultimately ‘drives the profits.'” — FTC v. MediaAlpha, Inc., Federal Complaint, Paragraph 73 — internal MediaAlpha employee correspondence about admittedly “bad” traffic from deceptive lead generators

“In 2019, a manager forwarded a consumer complaint to other employees of Defendants under the subject line, ‘Another happy customer.’ In the underlying message, the consumer reported that after visiting Defendants’ site, her ‘phone started ringing with insurance companies calling me, and it has been incessant, all day, and non-[s]top.’ The consumer went on, saying she ‘received 50 calls yesterday, 20 today,’ and that the telemarketers who were calling did ‘real harm’ and ‘refuse to honor [her] request to put [her] on their do not call list.'” — FTC v. MediaAlpha, Inc., Federal Complaint, Paragraph 60

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: Sick People Left Without Coverage

The FTC complaint states directly: “people who seek medical treatment learn they have no coverage for the care they need.” MediaAlpha’s pipeline funneled millions of people searching for real healthcare coverage toward telemarketers who sold them products that provide almost no protection. The complaint identifies the specific product types: short-term plans, limited benefit plans, and health sharing arrangements — none of which are ACA-qualified, none of which cover pre-existing conditions as required by federal law, and none of which conform to established out-of-pocket expense limits.

The people most likely to click an ad that looks like a government health insurance portal are the people who need healthcare most urgently: low-income individuals, people with pre-existing conditions, people who cannot afford employer-sponsored insurance. MediaAlpha’s ads specifically targeted those searching for Medicaid, marketplace insurance, and Obamacare — programs that exist precisely because those populations are medically vulnerable. The company built its revenue model on exploiting that vulnerability.

A limited benefit plan with a $1,000-per-day hospital benefit means a cancer diagnosis, a car accident, a surgery, or a serious infection produces a debt that most working Americans cannot survive financially. Medical debt forces people to skip follow-up care, avoid filling prescriptions, and delay treatment for worsening conditions. The harm MediaAlpha caused is not abstract. It shows up in the form of unpaid bills sent to collections, bankruptcies filed, and treatment delayed or abandoned.

Economic Inequality: The Poor Get Targeted, the Company Gets Paid

MediaAlpha’s ads specifically targeted search terms used by people trying to find government assistance programs: “Medicaid,” “Obamacare,” “marketplace insurance,” “healthcare gov.” These are not terms used by people with great employer-sponsored coverage and disposable income. These are terms used by people in the gaps — the self-employed, the part-time worker, the person between jobs, the person who just aged off a parent’s plan. MediaAlpha spent millions of dollars to intercept those searches before those people could reach the actual government resource at HealthCare.gov.

The company then sold those people’s personal data — income information, health conditions, household size — to the highest bidder. The poorer and sicker you were, the more valuable your lead. Telemarketers paid more for consumers already engaged with the subject of health insurance because those consumers were more likely to buy something. The entire economic engine ran on the financial desperation of people who could not afford to be wrong about their health coverage.

One demand partner complained that over 20% of the consumers they contacted after purchasing MediaAlpha leads were asking for grocery cards, stimulus checks, gift cards, gas cards, housing vouchers, and free vacations — items that had apparently been advertised somewhere in the chain to draw in the most economically vulnerable possible consumers. MediaAlpha’s response was to blame the consumers for being confused. The company continued working with that supply partner because, as an internal employee wrote: a large supply partner providing high lead volume “ultimately drives the profits.”