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The Trump administration on Tuesday announced a new national effort to ensure Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) coverage is provided only to eligible individuals.

CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) will launch a system that provides each state with enrollment reports that will indicate whether the federal databases they have at their disposal can verify an individual’s citizenship and immigration status.

CMS first officials told the Washington Post the new data collection system is one of the “most aggressive steps” yet to ensure those participating in Medicaid or CHIP are eligible to do so.

“We are tightening oversight of enrollment to safeguard taxpayer dollars and guarantee that these vital programs serve only those who are truly eligible under the law,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement.

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said the move was needed to protect the integrity of safety net health care programs.

“Every dollar misspent is a dollar taken away from an eligible, vulnerable individual in need of Medicaid and CHIP,” Oz said. “This action underscores our unwavering commitment to program integrity, safeguarding taxpayer dollars, and ensuring benefits are strictly reserved for those eligible under the law.”

CMS will provide the reports to states every month, the agency said. On an ongoing basis, each state will receive the report and then be required to take a “case review” of the individuals in question. States will be required to communicate their findings back to CMS.

The initiative comes less than a month after a federal judge ordered HHS to stop sharing information about enrollees in public benefit programs with immigration authorities.

The court ruled that such sharing of information could not continue because it went beyond what the Trump administration was allowed to do, absent additional guidance from Congress.

Still, the move to tighten oversight of these programs represents the latest effort by the White House to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to access public resources.

In February, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling on all federal agencies to step up their efforts to ensure people were only receiving the benefits to which they were actually legally entitled.

Under the direction of Trump’s executive order, HHS expanded the definition of “public benefits” programs earlier this year, essentially increasing the number of programs that are subject to verification and eligibility checks.

CMS Launches Nationwide Enrollment Verification System to Remove Ineligible Immigrants From Medicaid and CHIP

This move is a significant expansion of an existing program at CMS, which allows states to confirm the immigration and citizenship status of Medicaid and CHIP enrollees in collaboration with HHS. While some states have been using this system since 2009, the CMS expansion of it this year means every state will now be using it every month.

States will now be required to run case reviews every month for all the enrollees flagged in CMS’s reports. The verification checks had previously been optional, and only about half the states were actually using them. The new system will now require that they be used nationwide.

CMS has also emphasized that it will be looking to recover all of the dollars that have been misspent by Medicaid and CHIP on individuals not eligible for these programs. The new policy announcement from CMS calls for it to “develop and pursue the most effective ways to recover misspent funds.”

CMS has also said states will be responsible for helping to verify the accuracy of the data they receive about eligibility checks for the first time. In the past, the federal government provided much of this guidance to state Medicaid and CHIP offices.

The information provided will come from the data CMS and HHS have at their disposal, such as immigration information from DHS (Department of Homeland Security), and cross-checking that data with the Social Security Administration to ensure citizenship eligibility.

Tuesday’s CMS announcement is in some ways notable because it is not directly a federal executive branch response to the federal court decision earlier this month to halt information sharing with ICE.

CMS has previously relied on information sharing with ICE to prevent ineligible immigrants from using these programs. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. issued a statement on Tuesday in which he called the new CMS policy a “transparent effort” to keep the programs “intact and accessible to those in need.”

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz also weighed in on the Tuesday press release with the following statement:

“As a country, we take great pride in the generosity of our safety net programs. But that generosity is predicated on making sure those who are in need and eligible for benefits are the only ones who receive them. Strengthening verification of eligibility is not only a matter of ensuring program integrity, but of building trust with the American people.”

CMS administrators have stated that the information sharing will be reciprocal and that state and local officials will have access to data about their citizens that was previously not available.

CMS’s new policy is expected to go into effect at some point later this year, with the states then being required to verify eligibility every month. The Trump administration is expected to formally introduce this legislation during the coming fall.