CMS touts early uses of new biometric verification tools for Medicare.gov
Acting administrator of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) Amy Gleason participates in an event on "Making Health Technology Great Again," in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on July 30, 2025. Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Amy Gleason, acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service and strategic advisor to CMS, said 60% of accounts created since the rollout “have all been using one of these modern credentials.”
LAS VEGAS — The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rolled out enhanced identity verification login options for Medicare.gov earlier this month, and an official said the agency is already seeing a strong response rate from users despite making little fanfare about the move.
During a Tuesday session at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, Amy Gleason — acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service and strategic advisor to CMS — told the audience “we just added modern identity credentials to Medicare.gov, so now Medicare patients can come in and use Login.gov, ID.me or CLEAR.”
She said the agency “silently” added the new login options to the site last week, and added that users creating new accounts can “authenticate using just their biometrics, just like they can in other parts of their life.”
Gleason said that within the first five to six days, “25% of the people just automatically picked one of those new modern credentials.”
She added that “60% of new accounts that have been created have all been using one of these modern credentials, and 90% of those people that created a new account already had been identity-verified somewhere else before they came.”
In a March 4 press release, CMS said “if someone chooses to create an account, Medicare is providing new and free options with enhanced security to help protect their Medicare information.” The agency noted that current Medicare account users can continue to log in using their current login credentials.
The government’s centralized, single sign-on identity proofing service — Login.gov — is used by the public to access a range of federal and state platforms and includes facial recognition verification. ID.me is another, private sector digital identity proofing platform that also leverages facial recognition technology to verify users to federal platforms, including the IRS and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
CLEAR announced in December that it reached an agreement with CMS to provide enhanced identity verification services for Medicare.gov. The company said at the time that the platform “will integrate CLEAR1 — CLEAR’s secure identity platform — for account creation, account recovery, and access to healthcare information.”
Gleason had been serving as acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency after tech billionaire Elon Musk departed the cost-cutting unit last year. DOGE and its allies have said that increased use of identity verification tools like Login.gov were necessary for advancing the Trump administration’s anti-fraud efforts.
Nextgov/FCW Senior Correspondent Natalie Alms contributed to this report.