The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has added three modern identity credential options to Medicare.gov, enabling new users to authenticate using biometrics alone. The move was confirmed by Amy Gleason, acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service and strategic advisor to CMS, during a session at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas.
Gleason said CMS “silently” rolled out the new login options and noted that early adoption has been strong. Within the first five to six days, 25 percent of people creating new accounts chose one of the new credential options. Across all new accounts opened since the rollout, 60 percent have used modern credentials, and 90 percent of those new account holders had already completed identity verification through another service before arriving at Medicare.gov.
The three options now available are Login.gov, the federal government’s centralized single sign-on identity proofing service, which includes facial recognition verification; ID.me, a private-sector digital identity platform that also uses facial recognition and holds an existing contract to support Medicare.gov; and CLEAR, the biometric identity company. CLEAR announced its agreement with CMS in December, stating that its CLEAR1 secure identity platform would support account creation, account recovery, and access to healthcare information on Medicare.gov.
Existing Medicare account holders are not required to switch and can continue using their current login credentials. New users who prefer traditional account creation methods may also do so. In a March 4 press release, CMS framed the additions as “new and free options with enhanced security” for those who choose to create a new account.
The rollout aligns with the Trump administration’s broader push to expand identity verification across federal platforms. DOGE and its allies have cited expanded use of tools such as Login.gov as central to anti-fraud efforts across federal agencies. Login.gov is deployed across a range of federal and state platforms. ID.me serves multiple federal agencies, including the IRS and the Department of Veterans Affairs. CLEAR has been expanding its government identity offerings over the past year.
Gleason noted that the high share of new users opting into modern credentials reflects the broader shift in how people expect to verify their identities online. “Ninety percent of those people that created a new account already had been identity-verified somewhere else before they came,” she said, underscoring that the federal government is increasingly meeting users where their digital identity habits already exist.
Sources: Nextgov/FCW, CLEAR
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By Cass Kennedy
