Q&A on the News

Q: Will Medicare cards with new numbers be shipped to all U.S. residents? This was announced April 1 and I still haven’t received a new card. —Norma Hockensmith, Canton

A: Starting in April, those enrolled in Medicare for the first time were the first in the U.S. to start receiving the new cards, according to medicare.gov. Individuals who were previously enrolled in Medicare would receive the card next, starting in May.

The cards are being mailed on a “rolling basis,” based on factors including geographic location over the next year. The website, medicare.gov/ newcard, provides a list of the states where the cards are being mailed and offers a way to sign up to receive an email when cards start being mailed in your state.

According to the site, as of late May, cards were being mailed to Alaska, California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as, American Samoa, Guam and Northern Mariana Islands. It takes at least a month for cards to be mailed to the locations.

Other states will start to receive the cards sometime after June. According to a sequence for the mailings provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, these states will be next to receive the cards: Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Then these states will follow: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Georgia is in the next group, along with Alabama, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

All Social Security numbers are required to be removed from all Medicare cards by April 2019.

Q&A on the News runs Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Fast Copy News Service wrote this column. Do you have a question? We’ll try to get the answer. Call 404222-2002 or email q&a@ajc. com (include name, phone and city).