Medicare’s New Smart Card Technology

To take the Medicare identity protection mandates a step further, the U.S. House of Representatives’ House Ways and Means Committee recently passed a bipartisan health bill. The bill, titled Fighting Fraud to Protect Care for Seniors Act of 2018, seeks to greatly deter the $60 billion in abuse and fraud within the Medicare program with the use of smart card technology. The bill will create a three-year pilot program to evaluate the feasibility of a beneficiary smart card that’s machine-readable, tamper-resistant, chip-embedded and personal identification number (PIN) enabled.