She is 66 and on Original Medicare. Her latest Medicare Summary Notice (MSN) lists a $1,200 knee brace from a supplier she has never heard of. Her knees are fine and no package ever came. Medicare paid the claim before she ever saw it.
This mailing goes to enrollees in Original Medicare, which now covers just under half of enrollees. Medicare Advantage members get an Explanation of Benefits from their plan instead. Original Medicare members with a stand-alone Part D plan also get a separate Part D EOB for prescription claims, and the same review applies there. All cost figures below use the 2026 plan year rules CMS already published.
The MSN lists every service or supply that providers and suppliers billed to Medicare during the period, what Medicare paid, and the maximum amount you may owe the provider. The notice serves as a billing record, and its value lies in that record.
Medicare now mails paper MSNs every six months to anyone who used services or supplies in that period. A brace billed in spring can sit in the system, already paid, until a fall mailing shows it to her. By then the supplier has the money and may have moved on.
A fraudulent equipment claim arrives with a supplier number, a diagnosis code and a prescribing doctor. On paper, it looks like every legitimate brace claim. Only the beneficiary knows whether a box ever showed up at her door.
Federal prosecutors showed the scale in...
She is 66 and on Original Medicare. Her latest Medicare Summary Notice (MSN) lists a $1,200 knee brace from a supplier she has never heard of. Her knees are fine and no package ever came. Medicare...