In the coming years, Medicare benefits cards will no longer include the recipients social security number. Prompted by a desire to lower the risk of identity theft for those carrying benefits cards, a bill recently signed by President Obama requires a new identification system to be created for Medicare cards. The change will take time though, with a four year period allotted for creating the new system and beginning to issue the new cards, and another four years to get all current recipients the new cards.
See Robert Pear, New Cards for Medicare Recipients Will Omit Social Security Numbers, New York Times, Apr. 20, 2015.
Special thanks to Lewis Saret for bringing this article to my attention.
