More than 30,000 people will be removed from Louisiana's Medicaid program after a new verification system determined they likely made too much money to be eligible.

In February, the Department of Health sent out 40,007 letters warning recipients that they could lose access to the taxpayer-funded health insurance program unless they could demonstrate that they still are eligible. As of Monday, 30,500 of those cases had been closed, said Robert Johannessen, communications director for LDH.

This was not the first time program officials have used wage data from the Louisiana Workforce Commission to check eligibility, Johannessen noted. Income checks previously were done at application and renewal, so that the 40,007 people would have been notified over a 12-month period.