Trump admin using AI to deny medical care for seniors in disastrous experiment

The Trump administration launched a pilot program in January that uses artificial intelligence to decide whether to approve or deny certain medical treatments for Medicare patients, a federal healthcare program for seniors that previously did not require such pre-approval. The program has experienced technical failures, long delays in decisions, and unexpected denials of care requests, with healthcare providers reporting patients suffering in pain while waiting for authorization and describing the system as fundamentally broken. The Government Accountability Office determined that Trump officials did not follow proper procedures in setting up the program, though it continues operating with plans to expand further despite lawmakers' efforts to shut it down and release more information about it. According to the source text, vendors contracted to run the program have financial incentives to deny claims, and their implementation has been rushed with technology that was not adequately prepared.