Effective January 1, 2009, all Group Health Plans and Third Party Administrators are required to provide the Center for Medicare Services (CMS) with the Social Security numbers of each enrolled member/participant. This is a result of the SCHIP Extension Act of 2007 and is meant to help CMS determine whether the group plan should be the primary payor for any Medicare entitled enrollees.

Failure of any party (employers, health insurance carriers and any health insurance member) to comply with this Federal mandate can be assessed a financial penalty as described on the CMS website at www.medicare.com.

In order for The Health Plan to comply with this mandate, we will be contacting any covered individuals that we do not have a Social Security number on record.

The confidentiality of this information is protected by HIPAA privacy, and will only be used to facilitate our government mandate and will be provided only to CMS under secure measures.