SSIs Will Be Removed from Medicare ID Cards

Recent breaches of personal health information (PHI) and a decade of horror stories about exposed Social Security identification (SSI) numbers prompted the government to mandate that the numbers be removed from Medicare cards. President Obama signed a bill directing the conversion of the complex Medicare system to a new identification system at the same time as the longed-for SGR repeal. Under the new law, Medicare officials have up to four years to remove the numbers from the cards. They intend to replace the Social Security number with “a randomly generated Medicare beneficiary identifier,” but the details are still being worked out.