670,000 Australians are collectively owed $110 million in unclaimed Medicare rebates from the Department of Human Services (DHS). Medicare is sending correspondence to those individuals who did not provide their bank account details to DHS and have thus missed out on rebates for doctors visits and other service fees. If you are entitled to reimbursement, you will be contacted via your online myGov account or by post.
Roll outs such as these unfortunately get the attention of criminals who try to interfere with the process by stealing the identity of unwitting individuals.
There are three main ways in which criminals can interfere with this reimbursement:
IDCARE recommends the following:
If you wish to contact the Medicare regarding this matter please call 132 011.
For more information on Medicare reimbursement please click on the below links.
For more information on credentials and identity theft please have a look at the below IDCARE Fact Sheets.
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VIC: 03 7018 2366
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IDCARE as a registered charity does not ask individuals to donate or pay for our front line services. We are not a charity that can receive tax deductible donations.
We rely on organisations that care enough about you to care about us to keep our charitable service going. Proudly these organisations are displayed above and on our Subscriber Organisations page.
If you are asked for payment from someone claiming to be from IDCARE, please report this to us using our Report Phishing email.
IDCARE has access to the Department of Home Affairs Free Interpreting Service, delivered by the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National). Access to the Free Interpreting Service is provided to assist you to communicate with non-English speaking people who hold a Medicare card. Please note that the service does not extend to New Zealand citizens or residents who do not hold an Australian Medicare card, or to tourists, overseas students or people on temporary work visas.
New Zealand Relay provides services to help Deaf, hearing impaired, speech impaired, Deafblind and standard phone users communicate with their peers.
A TTY user connects to New Zealand Relay via a toll-free number and types their conversation to a Relay Assistant (RA) who then reads out the typed message to a standard phone user (hearing person).
The RA relays the hearing person's spoken words by typing them back to the Textphone (TTY) User.
The National Relay Service (NRS) is an Australian government initiative that allows people who are deaf, hard of hearing and/or have a speech impairment to make and receive phone calls.
The NRS is available 24 hours a day, every day and relays more than a million calls each year throughout Australia.
