{"id":12995,"date":"2017-09-14T13:19:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/get-ready-medicare-will-mail-new-cards-to-60-million-people\/"},"modified":"2017-09-14T13:19:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T21:19:00","slug":"get-ready-medicare-will-mail-new-cards-to-60-million-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/get-ready-medicare-will-mail-new-cards-to-60-million-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Ready! Medicare Will Mail New Cards to 60 Million People"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Kodjak<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n The new Medicare cards (right) will not use Social Security numbers for identification. Instead, they will have random sequences of letters and numbers.<\/p>\n

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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services \/AP<\/p>\n

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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services \/AP<\/p>\n

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It’s an administrative task for the ages.<\/p>\n

Medicare is getting ready to issue all 60 million of its beneficiaries new cards <\/a>with new ID numbers as way to combat identity theft and fraud.<\/p>\n

The rollout begins next April, but the agency is already beginning its outreach campaign.<\/p>\n

“We want to make this process as easy as possible for everybody involved,” said Seema Verma,<\/a> the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, on a conference call Thursday.<\/p>\n

The agency has set up a website, is sending out handbooks to all enrollees, and has call centers ready to answer questions from beneficiaries and doctors.<\/p>\n

Until now, Medicare used people’s Social Security numbers. But Congress in 2015 passed a law requiring the agency to change that as a way to protect seniors from identity theft. The new identifiers will be a randomly generated sequence of 11 numbers and letters.<\/p>\n

“Changing numbers for nearly 60 million people on Medicare may be a hassle, but it’s a good idea given the bigger hassles that come with identity theft,” says Tricia Neumann<\/a>, director of the Program on Medicare Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.<\/p>\n