Fight health care fraud: guard your Medicare number!

 Medicare open enrollment is here (October 15 to December 7), which means fraudsters and identity thieves will increase their efforts to get and abuse Medicare numbers from people.

Fortunately, there are many measures you can take to fight health care fraud:

• Guard your Medicare number. Protect it the same way you do for your credit card numbers. Medicare will never contact you for your Medicare number or other personal information. Don’t share your Medicare number or other personal information with anyone who contacts you by phone, email, or by approaching you in person, unless you’ve given them permission in advance. 
• Don’t ever let anyone borrow or pay to use your Medicare number.
• If you’re looking to enroll in a Medicare plan, be suspicious of anyone who pressures you to act now for the best deal. There are no “early bird discounts” or “limited time offers.” Any offer that sounds too good to be true probably is.
• Be skeptical of offers for free gifts and free medical services. A common ploy of identity thieves is to say they can send you your free gift right away—they just need your Medicare number to confirm. Decline politely but firmly. 
• Do your part to protect your friends and neighbors: remind them to guard their Medicare numbers, too.
• Check your Medicare Summary Notice (MSN)–which gives you information on services submitted under your Medicare number–to make sure you and Medicare are only being charged for services you actually received. While the MSN is only mailed to you every 3 months, you can access your Original Medicare claims at any time on MyMedicare.gov. You’ll usually be able to see a claim within 24 hours after Medicare processes it.

You can report suspected fraud by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).

TTY users should call 1-877-486-2048. 

To learn more about how to protect yourself from health care fraud, visit Medicare.gov/fraud, or contact our state’s local Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP), which is the OIC's Statewide Health Insurance Benefits Advisors (SHIBA) program.