McDermed: New Medicare Cards Coming, Beware of Scams

This month the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will start mailing out the new Medicare cards to residents in Illinois. This move is in response to a 2015 law passed by Congress called the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act. The law requires the removal of Social Security numbers from all Medicare cards by April 2019. This new initiative is to protect against fraud and identity theft. A new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) will replace the Social Security Number (SSN)-based Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) on the new Medicare cards for Medicare transactions like billing, eligibility status and claim status.

The newly issued Medicare card's MBI is a randomly assigned identifier that is 11 characters long and contains a mix of numbers and uppercase letters. The MBI is confidential like your SSN and should be protected as personal health information. CMS is also removing the gender and signature line from the new Medicare card. The new card will not impact current Medicare benefits or status.

CMS has until April 2019 to mail out new cards to all 60 million national Medicaid beneficiaries. Current Medicare cards will be accepted until December 31, 2019, after which only the new MBI card will be accepted.

"These new cards will be a great way to protect from identity theft, but beneficiaries should still protect their MBI number as if it were a SSN number," Rep. McDermed said. "Once you get a new card you should destroy, not throw away, your old Medicare card. Beneficiaries should also be wary of scams contacting you by email or phone asking you to confirm your Medicare number so they can send you a new card."

If you need to update your mailing address you can do so online or by calling 1-800-772-1213.