Alva Review-Courier -

WASHINGTON (AP) — Old Medicare cards will be going in the shredder.

Officials said Tuesday the government is on track to meet a 2019 deadline for replacing Social Security numbers on Medicare cards with randomly generated digits and letters to protect seniors against identity theft. Planning for the massive transition has been underway for years.

Beneficiaries and their families should start seeing changes next April, Medicare announced Tuesday. That's when the agency will begin mailing out new cards to more than 57 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries. They'll be instructed to destroy t...