I'm enrolled in Medicare Easy Pay, so my monthly premium payments are payed by automatic deduction. I still receive, every month, a paper Medicare Premium Bill (CMS-500) which states plainly at the top right corner, "THIS IS NOT A BILL."
I thought, okay I'll just go paperless for this billing since I don't need a paper bill which is not a bill, and can look up the bill on-line if I need to. Besides, receiving this bill every month is problematic on two fronts. It's a security issue, because my medicare ID number, Medicare reminds me needs to be protected to reduce fraud, is printed twice on it and I have to deal with securely destroying it every month. Secondly is an environmental issues because of the waste it unnecessarily generates.
I was surprised, when scouring the medicare.gov website, that there was no option for me to go paperless for this bill. I chatted with a chat agent who said, indeed, there is no way to entirely avoid receiving paper bills, but I could opt for one annual paper bill. For that, I would have to call the main medicare number. After enduring a long wait on hold, the agent had to go off and investigate. She eventually came back and said she would have to "escalate" my request. So now I'm to wait ? days for a call to see if that worked.
Am I the only one who longs to go paperless for this monthly bill?