Everyone is becoming aware of identity theft as a recurring crime that is affecting a large portion of our population. Seniors are particularly sensitive to this new criminal activity and are trying to do everything they can to protect their information. They have discovered a weakness in our system and have been requesting assistance from the government in remedying the situation.
Apparently, all Medicare Cards display the social security number of the recipient. To make matters worse, every person with Medicare coverage has been requested to carry this card on their person. This is leaving seniors vulnerable to minor thefts in which their personal information will be readily available to every petty crook. Instead of having an account number specifically assigned to Medicare, they are being required to expose their social security number to numerous people who could easily copy it. Seniors are feeling very uncomfortable with this situation and have requested that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services fix this system. The Centers have taken the position that there is no problem as they have not been advised of one case of identity theft that could be traced back to a Medicare card. They say costs of changing the system would run about $500 million dollars and it would take five years to implement.
The Senate Finance Committee is supporting a revamp of the current system to eliminate this problem. It is near impossible to believe that, while we are all purchasing shredders and carefully watching over all forms of our identity, our seniors are being forced to carry their social security numbers on their person and required to present it to numerous employees so that they can obtain the benefits they so desperately need.