New Medicare Card Scams

New Medicare cards that will protect your Social Security number will find their way into your wallets next year.

Already there are warnings about the changeover to protect you against scammers.

The design for the new Medicare card is expected to be revealed this month and TV ads have already begun talking about the new cards, featuring the tagline “Guard Your Card.” The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will mail new cards to those receiving Medicare benefits beginning in April 2018 through April 2019. The new cards will use a unique, randomly assigned code — not your Social Security number. Seniors do not have to do anything to get a new card. The new ID, called a Medicare Beneficiary Identifier, is 11-characters in length and will be made of numbers and uppercase letters.

Keeping your new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier safe is critical for you.  Many advocates are warning that there is potential for new scams. As they have in the past, some fraudsters will say there’s a fee connected to receiving a new Medicare card; there is no such fee. Scammers might threaten that you could lose your benefits if you don’t react to their demands right away. Don’t fall for threats; be safe, be careful.