Well that's the worst headline I have read in a while

Literally and with no exaggeration, death panels. You know, the ones Republicans were yelling about a few years ago. Those exact fucking ones.

As I get older and need the healthcare system more, I have had this realization that except for cosmetic surgery no one uses healthcare that they don’t need. Like, no one is out there trying to scam their insurance company out of a free colonoscopy. They get that procedure because they don’t want to die. Rejecting claims should be illegal. The goal of the healthcare system should be to treat people. Insurance is the wrong paradigm to manage healthcare because implicitly it’s built around rationing resources.

We don’t do this with food, and yet healthcare is a basic need. What do we do as a society to meet our food needs? We scale up. We plant megatons of crops. We build new technologies to be able to produce more. Why with healthcare do we not do the same? Med schools should accept more than 2% of applicants. The number of doctors in the US is kept artificially low. Also, let people interested in medicine attend abbreviated university programs. Skip the 4 year bachelors and get your med school degree directly in 5-6 years like they do in the UK. Redirect all the overhead and money spent on insurance to building hospitals and hiring doctors.

Well I'm sure it'll be all fair and definitely not
DENIED
DENIED
DENIED
DENIED
DENIED CHACHING
DENIED CHACHING
CHACHING
CHACHING
CHACHING

Oh no, that'll deffo not happen. No way!!!

AI companies going to start generating fake claims and denying them for rewards, I guarantee it.

Is there a name for the next step beyond perverse incentives?

Because that's where we are now.

Here's your head of Medicare.

Good Ol' Doctor Oz.

Big profile you should be able to track him down easy in the wee hours of the morning to ask some questions as any good citizen of someone representing their interests.

https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/mehmet-oz.html

I fucking hate the future, man.

Officials assert that the AI tools will only be used to judge claims for about a dozen different types of procedures it deems to be wasteful and providing little benefit, including steroid shots to relieve pain, per the NYT.

Yeah cause people on medicare aren't likely to need steroid shots for things like joint pain or anything. Anyone 65 and older should start saving their money now to pay for their steroid shots that are going to start costing them a couple hundred bucks a pop.

So they will approve more claims to avoid paying, right... Right?

You don’t need AI for that….

#!/usr/bin/env python3

def main():
    try:
        _ = input("Enter reasoning for claim: ")  # read but ignore the input
        print("denied")                # always respond "denied"
    except (EOFError, KeyboardInterrupt):
        # Even if input is interrupted, still respond "denied"
        print("denied")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

So basically the opposite of what Obama or Biden did as usual https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/11/biden-proposes-guardrails-on-health-care-ai-upping-weight-loss-drug-access/

In the radio business they call that "payola", and it is very much illegal.

So, reject everything and let appeals sort it out.

We got you fam.

So bribe the private sector to deny all claims routed through them first for government healthcare and then claim 'gUbmEnT dEAtH pANEls!' are the problem.

something something video game character from a nintendo game who's colors are from mixing blue+yellow... 😏

I've wondered this for a while: Insurance is a contractual obligation on the insurer's part, right? What's stopping me from just suing them for breach of contract rather than going through their appeals process if they illegally deny my claim?

I guess "death panels" are fine if they are machines?

If it makes anyone feel better, they denied everything when it was humans running the show too

Ah! Americans need to be willing to dig deep—really tough it out—to cut costs and save as much money as AI makes possible so that the government can give just 1 more penny to the billionaires. Won't someone please think of the billionaires?

What’s the fucking point of paying for it anymore? Might as well not even have it at this point…

It should be illegal for anyone but a doctor to deny a claim. This isn't even going to be AI, its just going to be a program that denies everything.

what the fuck kind of country looks to save billions of dollars spent on healthcare for their own citizens instead of waste fraud & abuse by the uber wealthy, or the military?

you can have an insanely strong military without the waste & fraud that exists in the US

This is FUCKING enraging.

I didn't know I still had any faith to lose in the insurance industry. At this point anyone in a management position is undeniably evil, in all senses of the word. I wish nothing but the worst for them.