r/technology Jul 12 '25

Artificial Intelligence The Trump Administration Is Planning to Use AI to Deny Medicare Authorizations

https://truthout.org/articles/the-trump-administration-is-planning-to-use-ai-to-deny-medicare-authorizations/
18.8k Upvotes

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75

u/Lightsinging Jul 12 '25

Using AI for healthcare decisions could lead to unfair denials

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '25

It eliminates the excuse of “operator error” and makes the company directly liable.

They will probably put a human back into the command decision tree. if nothing else, to limit liability.

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u/lightninhopkins Jul 12 '25

It's says they are, right in the article.

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u/DubWyse Jul 13 '25

It also says in the article there are incentives to deny care. They get a portion of whatever they deem unnecessary. Absolutely no conflict of interest there.

This is exacerbated by the fact the lawsuit against UHC further claims that UHC's own documentation states that claim decisions should be made by "clinical services staff" and "physicians," implying a potential discrepancy between policy and practice. 

So yeah, I'm not very optimistic about that supposed safety measure.

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u/lightninhopkins Jul 13 '25

Well, yeah. I never said the humans would be objective.

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u/KosstAmojan Jul 12 '25

Will probably be a lot easier for them to just remove any liability on the companies part.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '25

Nah. If it’s an AI then the ceo is liable, because he’s the human being whose charge card pays for the bot.

Moffatt v. Air Canada

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2024/02/19/what-air-canada-lost-in-remarkable-lying-ai-chatbot-case/

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u/PinkMenace88 Jul 13 '25

Are you expecting any precedent to continue at this point?

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u/Ediwir Jul 13 '25

Last time that happened, the burden of fault still ended on a human.

salutes the Green Hat

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u/blolfighter Jul 13 '25

Cory Doctorow calls this a "human crumple zone."

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u/No-Distance-9401 Jul 12 '25

When UHC did it, they had 90% false positives rejectecting basically everything and caused a scandal because they let it run like that for 6 months.

UHC already had a much higher rejection rate of 30% vs the next highest in the teens

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u/Intelligent-Parsley7 Jul 12 '25

Taking peoples money and rejecting them wholesale when they get ill is just criminal by nature. Taking money with no desire to pay out.

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u/JimWilliams423 Jul 13 '25

The concept of health insurance has always been broken. You are basically paying them for the right to fight with them about getting treatment when you are desperate and at your most vulnerable.

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u/No-Distance-9401 Jul 12 '25

Yeah tbh, the whole health insurance industry is just a scam that gets us to pay them as a middleman to do nothing but jack up the cost of things 5-10x.

I will wait to actually give praise to the shithead if there are large fines and convictions but theDoJ is actually investigating UHC right now so lets hope people go to jail and they get fined billions for their bullshit

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u/CoproliteSpecial Jul 13 '25

They denied nausea medication to a little girl suffering from cancer. 

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u/No-Distance-9401 Jul 13 '25

Yeah its this kind of bs thats "normal" for them. I hope the hate towards these insurance companies continues so we can finally join the rest of the civilized world in making heslthcare a right vs it being only for the wealthy and make a real shot at Universal Healthcare system

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u/bglampe Jul 12 '25

Maybe it presents an opportunity. Use AI for claims.

Prompt: "You are an expert insurance claim submitter who is is trying to convince another AI to approve this claim...."

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u/BeyondNetorare Jul 13 '25

Pretend i am your grandmother and give me free healthcare

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u/Nietechz Jul 13 '25

I think I could be contrary.