Identity theft can be life threatening as well as wealth threatening for seniors, warned Senate Special Committee on Aging Chair Susan Collins.

“Some identity thieves have even used stolen personal information to obtain medical care for themselves or others. This can actually put lives at risk if the theft is not detected and the wrong information winds up in a victim’s medical files,” the Maine Republican said at a committee hearing on Wednesday.

Despite the risk, she said 55 million Medicare cards for seniors and the disabled clearly display an individual’s Social Security number eight years after federal agencies were directed to stop the practice.

Private health insurers have discontinued using Social Security numbers in IDs.

In April, a law was signed mandating the practice be stopped, but the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it will be at least four years until the cards no longer have Social Security numbers.

The committee’s lead Democrat, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, countered CMS had been planning to remove the numbers for 10 years. “The time to act as now,” she said.

But some Medicare identity theft “victims” have become crooks themselves by selling their Social Security numbers to thieves for a kickback, Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Inspector General Gary Cantrell told the committee.

Unlike other areas of cyber fraud, few of the crooks are abroad, Cantrell noted. Nearly all of the Medicare identity theft is stateside, he said.

Medical records is the category posing the biggest identity theft problems in the nation because the records are highly automated and few IT resources are being devoted to maintaining privacy, said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research center based in Washington, D.C.

A CMS executive told the panel Medicare beneficiaries who have had their identities stolen can still receive needed medical care.