Tech Giants Lobby Trump Health Officials in Quiet CMS Slack Room on AI Medical Apps

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 (TodayViralUSA) — Top technology companies have spent the past year pressing Trump administration health officials inside a government-run Slack workspace to speed Medicare reimbursement and looser oversight of artificial-intelligence health apps, according to a KFF Health News investigation published Friday.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services chat room — never formally announced through standard regulatory channels — grew to about 1,700 members, including representatives of Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, Google, Palantir and digital-health startups. Only a handful of patient advocates, doctors and hospital groups are present, the reporting found.

Federal officials used the channel to invite industry to a February FDA listening session on conversational AI products for patients. The meeting did not appear on the FDA’s public calendar. “This is a great opportunity to help FDA shape future guidance,” CMS senior policy adviser Morgan Taylor wrote in Slack, according to messages reviewed by KFF Health News.

Sales engine for Medicare apps

CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz has described giving industry a chance to “play in the sandbox of government-supported healthcare.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently called AI “much better informed than any doctor in the country.”

In a February Zoom meeting recorded and later reviewed by reporters, Jacob Shiff, chief AI and technology officer at CMS’s Innovation Center, said he hoped agency work would become a “sales engine” for health apps and enable companies to be “extremely profitable and scale.” Days before the public launch of a Medicare App Library, officials told industry that a medicare.gov listing would build enrollee trust — and suggested listed apps could be prioritized for a new program reimbursing AI chatbot advice and wearable tracking.

The library currently promotes roughly two dozen commercial apps to millions of seniors and people with disabilities, including products from major tech firms and newer startups such as Slothwise.

Advisory-committee concerns

CMS’s Slack code of conduct states the group is not an “advisory committee” and will not be used to obtain advice for HHS or CMS officials. Joseph Daval, a former FDA lawyer now at Harvard Medical School, told KFF Health News the chat nonetheless resembles a federal advisory panel — which would normally require public meetings and balanced membership — because participants interact, build consensus and shape preferred policy paths.

American Medical Association CEO John Whyte cautioned that many tools “just aren’t ready for primetime,” citing limited evidence, opaque data use and unclear liability when advice is wrong. CMS said in a statement that the Health Technology Ecosystem is an “open, voluntary technical collaboration” aimed at giving beneficiaries greater access to health information and digital tools. The FDA did not comment.

The reporting lands as the administration brands a broader “Health Technology Ecosystem” push to integrate AI across care — and as doctors warn that apps gaining “frictionless” access to medical records through national exchange networks could expose patients to privacy and safety risks.