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Opinion: Fight Medicare Fraud — Guard your Card

Published

8 years ago

November 14, 2017

By Greg Dill

If you have Medicare, you can protect your identity and help prevent health care fraud by guarding your Medicare card like you would a credit card.

Identity theft arising from stolen Medicare numbers is becoming more common. Medicare is in the process of removing Social Security numbers from Medicare cards and replacing them with a new, unique number for each person with Medicare.

Medicare will mail new Medicare cards with the new numbers between April 2018 and April 2019.

The new card won’t change your Medicare coverage or benefits. And there’s no charge for your new card.

But watch out for scammers!

Thieves may try to get your current Medicare number and other personal information by contacting you about your new Medicare card. They may claim to be from Medicare and use various phony pitches to get your Medicare number, such as:

Asking you to confirm your Medicare or Social Security number so they can send you a new card.
Telling you there’s a charge for your new card and they need to verify your personal information.
Threatening to cancel your health benefits if you don’t share your Medicare number or other personal information.

Don’t fall for any of this.

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.

Medicare, or someone representing Medicare, will only call and ask for personal information in these situations:

A Medicare health or drug plan can call you if you’re already a member of the plan. The agent who helped you join can also call you.
A customer service representative from 1-800-MEDICARE can call if you’ve called and left a message or a representative said that someone would call you back.

Only give personal information like your Medicare number to doctors, insurers acting on your behalf, or trusted people in the community who work with Medicare, like counselors from the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP).

If someone calls you and asks for your Medicare number or other personal information, hang up and call us at 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).

There are other steps you can take to protect yourself from identity theft that can lead to health care fraud.

Don’t ever let anyone borrow or pay to use your Medicare number. And review your Medicare Summary Notice to be sure you and Medicare are being charged only for items and services you actually received.

We’re in the midst of Medicare open enrollment season right now. This is the time every year when you can sign up for, switch, or drop a Medicare health plan (Part C) or a Medicare prescription drug plan (Part D). Open enrollment ends Dec. 7.

Scam artists often try to take advantage of open enrollment season. So if someone calls and tries to get you to sign up for a Medicare plan, keep in mind there are no “early bird discounts” or “limited time offers.”

Don’t let anyone rush you to enroll by claiming you need to “act now for the best deal.” And be skeptical of promises of free gifts, free medical services, discount packages or any offer that sounds too good to be true.

Greg Dill

It probably is.

To learn more about protecting yourself from identity theft and health care fraud, visit www.Medicare.gov/fraud or contact your local Senior Medicare Patrol (www.smpresource.org).

Greg Dill is Medicare’s regional administrator for Arizona, California, Nevada, Hawaii, and the Pacific Territories. You can always get answers to your Medicare questions by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).

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Black Artists in America, Installation Three Wraps at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

TRI-STATE DEFENDER — With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

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By Candace A. Gray | Tri-State Defender

The tulips gleefully greet those who enter the gates at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens on an almost spring day. More than 650,000 bulbs of various hues are currently on display. And they are truly breathtaking.

Inside the gallery, and equally as breathtaking, is the “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” exhibit, which runs through Sunday, March 29. This is the third installment of a three-part series that started years ago and illustrates part of the Black experience through visual arts in the 20th century.

“This story picks up where part two left off,’’ said Kevin Sharp, the Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director for the Dixon. “This era is when we really start to see the emergence of these important Black artists’ agency and freedom shine through. They start to say and express what they want to, and it was a really beautiful time.”

With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

“Though [Davis] was from LA, he actually lived in Memphis for a decade,” said Sharp. “He was a dean at Memphis College of Art, and later opened the first gallery in New York owned and operated by black curators.”

Another featured artist is former NFL player, Ernie Barnes. His work is distinctive. Where have you seen one of his most popular paintings, Sugar Shack? On the end scene and credits of the hit show “Good Times.” His piece Saturday Night, Durham, North Carolina, 1974 is in this collection.

Memphis native James Little’s “The War Baby: The Triptych” is among more than 50 works featured in “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the final installment of a three-part series highlighting the impact and evolution of Black artists through 2011.

The exhibit features other artists with Memphis ties, including abstract painter James Little, who was raised in a segregated Memphis and attended Memphis Academy of Art (before it was Memphis College of Art). He later moved to New York, became a teacher and an internationally acclaimed fixture in the art world in 2022 when he was named a Whitney Biennial selected artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Other artists like Romare Bearden, who had a Southern experience but lived up North, were featured in all three installments.

“During this period of time, he was a major figure,” said Sharp. “He wrote one of the first books on the history of African American art during a time when there were more Black academics, art teachers, more Black everything!”

Speaking of Black educators, Sharp said the head curator behind this tri-part series and Dixon’s partner in the arts is Earnestine Jenkins, Ph.D., an art history professor at the University of Memphis, who also earned a Master of Arts degree from Memphis State University (now UofM). “We began working with Dr. Jenkins in 2018,” he said.

Sharp explained that it takes a team of curators, registrars, counterparts at other museums, and more, about three years to assemble an exhibit like this. It came together quite seamlessly, he added. Each room conjured up more jaw-dropping “wows” than the one before it. Each piece worked with the others to tell the story of Black people and their collective experience during this time period.

One of the last artists about whom Sharp shared information was Bettye Saar, who will turn 100 years old this year. She’s been working in Los Angeles for 80 years and is finally getting her due. Her medium is collages or assemblages, and an incredible work of hers is on display. She’s married to an artist and has two daughters, also artists.

The exhibit catalogue bears some of these artists’ stories, among other scholarly information.

The exhibit, presented by the Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions, is culturally and colorfully rich. It is a must see and admission to the Dixon is free.

Visit https://www.dixon.org/ to learn more.

Fun Facts: An original James Little design lives in the flooring of the basketball court at Tom Lee Park, and he makes and mixes his own paint colors.