AI and health-tech companies have been lobbying Medicare officials in a 1,700-member Slack the government runs

A KFF Health News investigation published Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, found that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has run a private Slack workspace since August 2025 where tech companies, investors and federal health officials discuss AI health apps, Medicare promotion and access to medical records. The workspace has about 1,700 members, few of them patient advocates or doctors. CMS says it is an open, voluntary technical collaboration; legal experts told KFF it looks like a federal advisory committee, which would have to meet in public.

The government is about to start paying for AI health advice and steering seniors toward apps that read their medical records, and it turns out a lot of the rules of that road were sketched in a Slack channel where the people selling the apps outnumber the doctors and patients by a mile. Nobody here is accused of breaking a law, and opening up records to patients is a real goal with real fans. But “we'll be your sales engine” is not a sentence you want from the agency that decides which apps your grandmother sees on medicare.gov. If this is how health AI policy gets made, the fix is simple and boring: do it in the open, with the patients and physicians in the room, and with minutes anyone can read.

KFF Health News published an investigation on Friday, 9 October 2026, based on thousands of Slack messages, meeting transcripts, and video recordings it reviewed. CBS News ran the same story the same day. Those lines are KFF’s.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services set up the Slack workspace in August 2025 as part of what the administration calls the “Health Technology Ecosystem.” CMS is the federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. Amy Gleason, formerly acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency and now chief product officer of CMS’ Office of Health Technology and Products, welcomed participants and shared a code of conduct. CMS has not formally announced the workspace through federal regulatory channels, though officials have mentioned it at industry conferences. Those lines are KFF’s.

The workspace has grown to about 1,700 members, including people from digital health companies such as Oura Health, AI companies such as Palantir, and investment firms such as 8VC. KFF found only a handful of patient advocates, doctors, and hospital representatives among them. Those counts are KFF’s.

In February, Morgan Taylor, a CMS senior policy adviser, used the Slack to invite companies including Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, and Google to an FDA listening session on conversational AI products for patients. Conversational AI, here, means chatbots that talk with patients. Representatives from at least 35 industry organizations attended. The meeting was not on the FDA’s public calendar or in regulatory notices, and it was not open to the public. Those lines are KFF’s.

In a February Zoom meeting, Jacob Shiff, chief AI and technology officer at the CMS Innovation Center, told industry representatives he hoped the agency’s work would be a “sales engine” for their apps. KFF says a recording of the call, which had been available through a public Google Drive link, was made private the day after the newsroom asked about the comments. Those lines are KFF’s.

CMS officials told tech leaders that the new Medicare App Library, which promotes about two dozen commercial AI-driven apps to people on Medicare, would be an important distribution channel. In an April 7 meeting, Taylor said, speaking as if she were an enrollee: “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.” Those lines are KFF’s.

Tech vendors in the Slack lobbied for a “frictionless pathway” that would let vetted apps pull patients’ medical records from TEFCA, the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, after a one-time consent. TEFCA is the national network that lets health systems share electronic medical records. Kristen Valdes, chief executive of b.well, wrote: “My opinion is that we need to stop protecting patients from themselves. Full stop.” Jason Kulatunga, founder of Fasten Health, warned that security and privacy have to be designed around malicious actors. Those lines are KFF’s.

The workspace’s code of conduct says the group is not an “advisory committee.” Joseph Daval, a former FDA lawyer now at Harvard Medical School who reviewed messages for KFF, said it resembles one. Formal federal advisory committees must meet in public and meet fair-balance membership rules. Those lines are KFF’s account of Daval.

CMS declined to answer questions about the workspace, including its legality. Gleason said in a statement: “The Health Technology Ecosystem is an open, voluntary technical collaboration.” The FDA did not respond to KFF. Those lines are KFF’s.

American Medical Association chief executive John Whyte told KFF: “Some of these tools just aren’t ready for primetime.” That quotation is his, as KFF reports it.

In plain terms, KFF Health News reported on Friday that CMS has run a private Slack with about 1,700 members since August 2025, where tech companies and federal health officials talk about AI health apps, a Medicare app store, and access to medical records. Few members are doctors or patient advocates. In February a CMS official hoped the agency would be a “sales engine” for the apps, and an FDA listening session for industry was invited through the Slack and kept off the public calendar. CMS calls the project an open, voluntary technical collaboration. A former FDA lawyer told KFF it looks like a federal advisory committee, which would have to meet in public.