Covering the American health care system means we tell some scary stories. This episode of “An Arm and a Leg” sounds like a real horror movie.
It uses one of Hollywood’s favorite tropes: machines taking over. And the machines belong to the private health insurance company UnitedHealth Group.
Host Dan Weissmann talks to Stat News reporter Bob Herman about his investigation into Medicare Advantage plans that use an algorithm to make decisions about patient care. The algorithm is owned by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group.
Herman tells Weissmann that some of UnitedHealth’s own employees say the algorithm creates a “moral crisis” in which care is unfairly denied.
Scary stuff! Such reporting even has caught the eye of powerful people in government, putting Medicare Advantage plans under scrutiny.
Click to open the Transcript
Transcript: Son of Medicare: Attack of the Machines
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
Dan: Hey there–
So this is kind of a horror story. But it’s not quite the kind of story it might sound like at first.
Because at first, it might sound like a horror story about machines taking over, making all the decisions– and making terrible, horrifying choices. Very age-of-Artificial Intelligence.
But this is really a story about decisions made by people. For money.
It’s also kind of a twofer sequel– like those movies that pit two characters from earlier stories against each other. Like Godzilla vs King Kong, or Alien vs Predator.
Although in this case, I’ve gotta admit, the two monsters are not necessarily fighting each other.
Let’s get reacquainted with them.
On one side, coming back from our very last episo …
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Covering the American health care system means we tell some scary stories. This episode of “An Arm and a Leg” sounds like a real horror movie.
It uses one of Hollywood’s favorite tropes: machines taking over. And the machines belong to the private health insurance company UnitedHealth Group.
Host Dan Weissmann talks to Stat News reporter Bob Herman about his investigation into Medicare Advantage plans that use an algorithm to make decisions about patient care. The algorithm is owned by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group.
Herman tells Weissmann that some of UnitedHealth’s own employees say the algorithm creates a “moral crisis” in which care is unfairly denied.
Scary stuff! Such reporting even has caught the eye of powerful people in government, putting Medicare Advantage plans under scrutiny.
Click to open the Transcript
Transcript: Son of Medicare: Attack of the Machines
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
Dan: Hey there–
So this is kind of a horror story. But it’s not quite the kind of story it might sound like at first.
Because at first, it might sound like a horror story about machines taking over, making all the decisions– and making terrible, horrifying choices. Very age-of-Artificial Intelligence.
But this is really a story about decisions made by people. For money.
It’s also kind of a twofer sequel– like those movies that pit two characters from earlier stories against each other. Like Godzilla vs King Kong, or Alien vs Predator.
Although in this case, I’ve gotta admit, the two monsters are not necessarily fighting each other.
Let’s get reacquainted with them.
On one side, coming back from our very last episo …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]