Washington, DC – Social Security Administration officials have requested that CMS take immediate action to issue beneficiaries new membership cards that do not include their Social Security numbers to address identity theft.
In a report, SSA Inspector General Patrick O’Carroll said, “Displaying such information on Medicare cards unnecessarily places millions of individuals at risk for identity theft.” He added, “We do not believe a federal agency should place more value on convenience than the security of its beneficiaries’ personal information.”
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Clay Johnson, deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, in a memo to the heads of federal departments and agencies, wrote that CMS should develop plans to “eliminate the unnecessary collection and use of Social Security numbers within 18 months.”
However, CMS Chief Operating Officer Charlene Frizzera said issuing new cards would be a “huge undertaking” and would require three years to plan the change and eight more years to completely reissue cards. She said that beneficiaries would be alarmed if the government began issuing new cards or changing individual identification numbers. “We don’t want to scare them,” she said.
Medicare officials estimate that issuing new identification numbers would require $500 million in computer changes.
Good idea take off the numbers from the medicare cards even if takes three years start now to much info on the cards
This is great news.
Shouldn’t take more than 6 months computer programming and testing if a corporation ran the system – government requires 11 years?? No wonder this country is in trouble!!
“We don’t want to scare them.”???!
Dear Ms. CMS COO Charlene Frizzera: I hope you get treated like a two year old when it’s your time to retire.
It’s ridiculous how they treat and think of senior citizens, people who have gone through 65plus years of life facing all sorts of hardships but a piece of paper with different numbers on it is going to scare them.