The U.S. Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) will send new Medicare cards to its beneficiaries in the coming weeks. The primary benefit of the new cards is that it makes identity theft much less likely, since they will no longer include the beneficiary’s social security number.
This initiative results from the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, which required the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop a new card that does not contain an individual’s social security number. By improperly obtaining someone’s social security number, a dishonest individual can more easily commit acts of fraud and identity theft in the beneficiary’s name.
Instead, the new Medicare cards will contain a Medicare number. This will be a randomly assigned 11-digit combination of numbers and upper-case letters. In addition, the new cards will no longer indicate the beneficiary’s gender.
Click here to read the full release from the RRB