Medicare will no longer use Social Security numbers - but it will take eight years to implement

From the Office of the Insurance Commissioner

Concerned about the rising prevalence and sophistication of identity theft, most private health insurance companies have abandoned the use of Social Security numbers to identify individuals. The federal government even forbids private insurers to use the numbers on insurance cards when they provide medical or drug benefits under contract with Medicare.

But Medicare itself has continued the practice, imprinting Social Security numbers on more than 50 million benefit cards despite years of warnings from government watchdogs that it placed millions of people at risk for financial losses from identity theft.

That is about to change, after President Obama signed a bill last week that will end the use of those numbers on Medicare cards.

The main purpose of the law, adopted with broad bipartisan support, was to overhaul the way doctors are paid for treating Medicare patients. But it makes other changes as well. One section that received little attention says Social Security account numbers must not be “displayed, coded or embedded on the Medicare card.”

In his budget for 2016, Mr. Obama requested $50 million as a down payment “to support the removal of Social Security numbers from Medicare cards” — a step that federal auditors and investigators had been recommending for more than a decade.

Read the full article in the NY Times