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  • 2018-02-28 (xsd:date)
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  • New Medicare Card Telephone Scam (en)
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  • The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) was scheduled to begin sending new cards to Medicare recipients in April 2018, prompting telephone phishing scams, and viral social media alerts, in February 2018. The text of a widely-shared Facebook notice typically went like this: As the viral post correctly states, this is, of course, a scam. On its web site, the CMS warns: However, it's not clear exactly how widespread the scam calls have been, as of the end of February 2018. A spokesperson for the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the Bureau of Consumer Protection, told us by email that they were not aware of anything new in the way of a Medicare phone scam, beyond the known, ongoing efforts to defraud vulnerable seniors. According to the Better Business Bureau's interactive Scam Tracker map, a few consumers did report suspect Medicare-related phone calls between 13-25 February 2018. One wrote: The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has a Fraud Watch Network, specifically dedicated to recording and combatting instances of scams that target the elderly and senior citizens. In an email, an AARP spokesperson told us the network's telephone helpline had so far received a handful of calls about attempted scams involving the new Medicare card. The CMS will begin sending out new Medicare cards in April 2018, distributing them across the country over 12 months. See the schedule for your state here. Most notably, the new cards will no longer feature Social Security numbers, but rather a new identifier called a Medicare Beneficiary Identifier. The move was required by the 2015 Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, and according to CMS, is intended as a fraud prevention initiative that will help combat identity theft. The CMS will be sending out the new cards in the mail, so Medicare recipients are not required to take any action, other than making sure the agency has the correct mailing address on file. Recipients can check and update their mailing address by logging into their account on the Social Security Administration web site. (en)
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