KFF reports AI firms lobbied health officials in a CMS Slack workspace

KFF Health News reported on 9 October 2026 that AI and tech companies have lobbied Trump administration health officials inside a Slack workspace run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Amanda Seitz, Maia Rosenfeld, and Darius Tahir wrote the story, which also ran on CBS News. KFF Health News says it reviewed thousands of Slack messages, meeting transcripts, and video recordings. What follows is that reporting, except where a CMS or Medicare page is named.

CMS’s own interoperability framework calls that framework a voluntary blueprint for networks that want to be listed as a CMS-Aligned Network. It says patients, using applications of their choice, can access their electronic medical information.

A February session on conversational AI

KFF Health News reported that in February officials invited Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, and Google to a listening session on conversational AI products for patients, such as chatbots. It reported that at least 35 industry organizations attended a Food and Drug Administration meeting, that the meeting was not on the FDA’s public calendar, and that the invitation went out in Slack. It quotes CMS senior policy adviser Morgan Taylor: “This is a great opportunity to support HHS’ goals and share your state-of-the-art understanding of safe Conversational AI development and monitoring to help FDA shape future guidance.”

The advisory-committee question

An advisory committee, as KFF Health News explains it from Joseph Daval, is an independent panel an agency head, Congress, or the president can set up so an agency acts for the public rather than industry. KFF Health News reported that legal experts said such a panel would have to operate in public view. Daval, a former FDA lawyer now at Harvard Medical School, reviewed messages at KFF’s request. KFF Health News reported that he said the chat room in some ways resembles a federal advisory committee. He told KFF the law “was passed in part out of a concern about interest group capture,” and that a formal committee would face “membership requirements having to do with independence and fair balance.” That resemblance is Daval’s assessment, as KFF reports it.

KFF Health News reported the code of conduct’s own line: the group does not constitute an “advisory committee,” and it would not be used “to obtain advice or recommendations for HHS, CMS, or any HHS/CMS officials.”

KFF Health News reported that CMS declined to answer questions about the workspace, including about its legality. Amy Gleason, chief product officer for CMS’s Office of Health Technology and Products, emailed this statement, as KFF quotes it: “CMS is focused on giving Medicare beneficiaries greater access to their health information and useful digital tools while promoting an open, interoperable healthcare system. The Health Technology Ecosystem is an open, voluntary technical collaboration. CMS will continue working with patients, providers, payers, technology organizations, and other stakeholders to make health information more accessible and useful to the Americans it serves.” KFF Health News reported that the FDA did not respond.

The Medicare App Library, and records

KFF Health News reported that staff promised a Medicare App Library would bring companies new users, and that it promotes about two dozen commercial apps. The Medicare App Library, titled “Third-party apps that connect to Medicare,” says the apps are private-company products, checked for how they protect health information, and limited to the Medicare data a user chooses to share. The library lists 24 apps. Copilot Health (Microsoft AI) and Google Health (Google) are conversational AI assistants. Other labels include “Kill the clipboard” and diabetes and obesity support.

KFF Health News quotes Jacob Shiff of CMS’s Innovation Center hoping the work would be a “sales engine,” and quotes Taylor on 7 April: “If medicare.gov is promoting it, for lack of a better word, then yeah, it would be an app that I would trust and explore.”

TEFCA, the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, is the national health-records exchange framework. KFF Health News reported that vendors lobbied to have a vetted app treated as the patient asking for records, so the app could pull data over that network. It quotes Ryan Howells of the CARIN Alliance: “What more can you do to have trust in these apps?” It quotes Kristen Valdes, CEO of b.well: “My opinion is that we need to stop protecting patients from themselves.” KFF Health News reported that Valdes later said her line was about a system that has made it hard for patients to reach their own records.