Obama talks health care technology at meeting with executives

Dec 19 2013

President Barack Obama met privately with executives from several technology companies to discuss the difficulties the administration has had with healthcare.gov.

USA Today: Obama Meets With Tech Execs To Talk NSA, Health Care
President Obama met privately with several tech executives Tuesday to discuss the administration's efforts to address problems with the federal online health care exchange as well as the fallout that national security leaks have had on their companies, according to the White House. Among those who were invited to the White House meeting were Apple's CEO Tim Cook, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt (Madhani, 12/17).

The New York Times: Tech Leaders And Obama Find Shared Problem: Fading Public Trust
For months, leading technology companies have been buffeted by revelations about government spying on their customers' data, which they believe are undermining confidence in their services. The Obama administration has been blasted for the botched rollout of the health site, which prevented many people from signing up for health insurance in the first weeks of the site's introduction, but seem to have been largely repaired since then. The meeting on Tuesday brought those two issues together into a common forum, and at least partly in the public eye (Calmes, 12/17). 

Also in the news -- 

USA Today: Government Seeks Health Website Tech Help
The government put out a call for businesses that could address concerns at HealthCare.gov, the federal health insurance exchange. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services asked small businesses to describe experience that compared in "size, scope and complexity" to the skills needed to create the website (Kennedy, 12/17).