Editorial: Medicare cards still easy pickings for ID theft
Medicare still hasn't made simple, commonsense changes to protect its beneficiaries from the incredible hassle of having their identities stolen. Credit: medicare.gov
If you have a Medicare card, Washington has dropped the ball on protecting you against identity theft.
The problem is that the program's 48 million cards display Social Security numbers as part of their health insurance claim number. Social Security numbers are like gold for identity thieves.
That's why the Social Security Administration has for years advised people not to carry their cards, and the Office of Management and Budget in 2007 directed all federal agencies to develop a plan to reduce unnecessary use of the numbers. Maybe the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services didn't get the memo.
Five years later it still hasn't made simple, commonsense changes to protect its beneficiaries from the incredible hassle of having their identities stolen. That's inexcusable.
The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs have taken significant steps to remove the numbers from their insurance and identification cards, according to an Aug. 1 report from the Government Accountability Office. So have most private health insurers.
Last year the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services laid out some options it was considering for more secure cards, according to the GAO. A couple involved using only the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Another was to replace the number with a "Medicare beneficiary identifier."
But for some reason Medicare officials haven't managed to simply pick one. And they haven't even considered more high-tech alternatives such as magnetic stripes, smart chips or bar codes, according to the GAO. "Lack of action on this key initiative leaves Medicare beneficiaries exposed to the possibility of identity theft," the GAO said.
The number of incidents directly attributable to lost or stolen Medicare cards wasn't reported, but identity theft is a significant problem. In 2010, 8.6 million households had at least one victim, costing a cumulative $13.3 billion.
Medicare officials need to stop the foot-dragging. Identifying a workable alternative to Social Security numbers isn't quantum physics. It's high time to just do it.
