What Next TBD: When A.I. Denies Your Health Care

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Medicare Advantage plans have increased their reliance on software to determine what their customers require—and, therefore, receive—elderly patients are being denied coverage for care they need. What happens when an algorithm — not a doctor — decides how much care you need and it’s not enough? Guest: Casey Ross, national technology correspondent at STAT Host: Emily Peck If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next TBD. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Your Starbucks is ready.
0:03.0	Beans ground.
0:05.0	Milk frothed.
0:06.0	Shots pulled.
0:07.0	Velvety milk poured into a double shot of dark perfection and
0:11.0	oof, that's the good stuff.
0:14.0	The baristas are ready.
0:15.0	The finest coffee beans are ready.
0:17.0	The Starbucks you love is ready.
0:20.0	Hello again from the Starbucks coffee company.
0:27.1	Why don't you tell me the story of Francis Walter? What happened to her?
0:38.4	Frances Walter had suffered an injury.
0:41.5	She had fallen and broken her shoulder.
0:47.6	That's Casey Ross, National Technology Correspondent at Statt.
0:52.2	She had an acute hospital stay.
0:55.0	So she stayed in the hospital for some period of time and had a surgery to repair her
1:01.5	shoulder and then was discharged to a nursing home.
1:06.4	And once she got into the nursing home, an algorithm was run about her care to suggest how long she ought to be in the nursing home.
1:17.6	This algorithm, a hidden aspect of Medicare Advantage insurance plans, looked through Francis's past health records and considered how long other patients typically need care
1:28.9	when recovering from this kind of injury. It determined she only needed 16.6 days to recover.
1:36.4	On the 17th day, she gets a notice from her insurer, security health plan of Wisconsin,
1:48.8	that she no longer meets Medicare coverage criteria to continue to stay in the nursing home. She doesn't know anything about this algorithm,
	...

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