this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2026
326 points (99.4% liked)
Fuck AI
8367 readers
931 users here now
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is just a symptom of a failed healthcare system. The way things typically work is that you go into a hospital and receive care. The hospital has insurance and billing specialists which submit what they did to insurance to get money. The insurance pays the least amount they can and the patient gets the bill for the rest. Insurance companies know they should be covering more but patients don’t have the capacity and capability (in most cases) to dig deep into medical reimbursements to get what they are owed. Insurance companies like this as they keep that money. Now however, hospitals are using AI to get the full amount they are owed and thus having patients pay less and insurance pay more.
Which makes me wonder why hospitals don't slip a little something in the IV bag. Adding new problems can be quite lucrative.
Because it takes medical staff to perform that action. If a hospital administration increases profits by 10-20%, the investors and execs get a bonus. The people providing the treatment are not financially incentivized to impact patient outcomes negatively. Pharma reps aren’t directly incentivized for that either but they pushed opioids for bonuses without issue…that’s a whole different conversation however. Anyways, the nurse administering an IV isn’t going to get a fat check for making you sick…they will however get in trouble for malpractice. Your hospital admin or exec ain’t getting their hands dirty by giving care either. So the only people providing care are those not incentivized to provide bad care and actively terrified of a malpractice suit in the event they provide less than standard care.
Does that mean the legal fees of fighting a malpractice suit (on the corporate side) would be more costly than actually providing good care? Sounds like something that can be solved if the profits gained from malpractice are big enough.
Like, if I went into the dentistry business, and got a little rowdy in a patient's mouth during a cleaning, I could go, "I advise a gold crown on Number Whatever the Fuck. Needed urgently". Then I can get a payday bonus of a few thousand.
Dental is certainly a bit different but I’ve only worked in medical so don’t have a ton of experience in dental.
dentist might lose thier business, or reputation which is a deathknell to thier business in an area if customers post bad reviews of being scammed by dentists, or report the dentist. insurance barely covers certain dental procedures as it is(for individual plans)
that is your dentist's decision, not the actual cost of the procedure.
Back to medical, then. I bring up the case of Harold Shipman.
This guy got some profits by killing old people and claiming they died of old age. He messed up in the end by concocting a will that left a suspiciously high number of funds for himself rather than the deceased's children. An American doctor, in theory, could get away with this scheme by targeting old people without next of kin.
It’s more about who pays the malpractice suit. Doctors have their own malpractice insurance so those same people not incentivized to provide bad care are also financially on the hook if they provide bad care. Malpractice insurance is crazy expensive. If you see a hospital exec recommend a certain care strategy, that is cause for concern but medical staff have all the downside and no upside in giving bad care. That’s just hospitals though. Things change in private practice but there a malpractice suit could end their entire livelihood so the risk ain’t worth it. A hospital admin/investor would probably say the risk is worth it but the medical staff would absolutely know they would be taking the fall for it.
Because then that's criminal liability
Because billing and patient care are intentionally managed by different people.