The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will soon be issuing every Medicare beneficiary a new Medicare card. The new card will not include Social Security Numbers in order to prevent fraud and fight identity theft.
Each Medicare beneficiary will have a unique, randomly-assigned Medicare number consisting of eleven characters, a combination of numbers and uppercase letters. Because it is randomly generated, there is no connection to any other personal identifying information.
CMS will begin mailing the newly designed Medicare cards in April 2018; all cards will be replaced with the new card by April 2019. Beneficiaries can begin using the new card as soon as they get it. Once a new card is received, CMS is asking beneficiaries to safely and securely destroy the old Medicare card.
More information can be found here.
