The U.S. government will soon start sending out new Medicare cards to 59 million people and scammers are using the event as an opportunity to steal identities.
Historically, each Medicare ID card has contained the Social Security numbers of the members, but that has made people ripe to be ripped off.
“It should be random numbers,” said Ginger Roundtree who, is still a few year away from Medicare.
The new cards replace Social Security numbers with randomly selected Medicare numbers, but the change comes with an unintended consequence - scammers.
“They are pretending to be Medicare,” said health care attorney Jeanne Helton. “They say they need their bank account number because new cards will be linked to it and people are falling for that.”
AARP said scammers are reportedly threatening to cancel the health insurance of seniors if they don’t give up their Medicare numbers.
Helton said the pluses of the new cards outweigh the minuses.
“I think it will work. It won’t be tied to any personal data of individuals,” she said.
“I feel safer without people knowing my Social Security number,” Roundtree said.
In Florida, the Medicare card change will take place from July through October.