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Let's Give People The Ability To Verify The Authenticity Of Medicare Cards Freely.
02 Feb 2019
On 22 January 2019, a Q&A was published by Chuck Grassley, United States Senator for Iowa addressing the topic of new Medicare cards and Medicare fraud in the United States.
You can view the Q&A here: https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/qa-new-medicare-cards-and-medicare-fraud
If you're not familiar with what is happening in the US, Congress passed legislation to remove Social Security Numbers from all Medicare cards. This recent move is to help stop medical identity fraud and identity theft. Instead of displaying a Social Security Number, a new 11-digit Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) will be printed on cards.
To add some context to all of this, let's quickly look at why medical identity fraud happens in the first place. Generally, the identity thief doesn't want to pay for their medical expenses. As such, they try to use your health insurance to get some medical care and then leave you with the medical bill. In addition to the financial cost of medical fraud, it could also be very dangerous for your health. Doctors may update your health records with the imposter's medical information and then use the wrong information to treat you in the future.
It may also affect life insurance and health insurance premiums due to the imposter's medical information. Also, if the medical bills are under your name but don't go to your address and remain unpaid, it could affect your credit rating.
In my opinion, the new 11-digit MBI will not solve the medical identity fraud issue. Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated with identity theft and adding a new ID number to the government's database will not make medical fraud disappear.
Instead of replacing information on Medicare cards, Congress needs to focus on stopping fake Medicare cards which are the real cause of the problem. It's not what is on the card that is going to stop fraudsters, the better question is, "How does a doctor, hospital or pharmacist know that the Medicare card that they are looking at is real or fake?" By giving people the ability to verify the authenticity of Medicare cards, Congress can finally stop medical identity fraud once and for all.
The Solution:
VeriDoc Global has developed a software solution to eliminate document fraud and counterfeits. By adding a VeriDoc Secured QR code to Medicare cards, anyone with a QR code reader on their mobile phone can easily verify the authenticity of a Medicare card within a few seconds. In other words, with no expensive or special hardware required, anyone including doctors, hospitals and pharmacists could simply scan a QR code on a Medicare card and verify if it is real or fake whenever and wherever they require.
How it works:
The VeriDoc Protocol uses a unique hash value to verify whether a document is real or fake. Hash values can be compared to the DNA or fingerprint of a file, whereby no two hash values are the same. The original document is processed through a cryptographic algorithm and a hash value is produced which identifies the original document.
If the document is modified in any way, the value of the hash will also change significantly. VeriDoc Global allows users to verify whether a document is real or fake by simply scanning a QR code on the document. Once the QR code is scanned, VeriDoc compares the unique hash value found in the QR code to the unique hash value of the original document stored on the client's server and on the blockchain.
Since the unique hash value stored in the blockchain is incorruptible and can never be modified, it lends itself as a highly trusted reference point for the verification process.
Here's a video explaining how the VeriDoc Global ID Solution works:
To learn more, please visit our website at: www.veridocglobal.com
This article was written by Daniel da Silva Lay. Daniel is the COO of VeriDoc Global and invites you to connect and explore how VeriDoc Global's anti-fraud solution can be of benefit to you or your organization.
This article was originally posted on Medium.