#health

I've been wondering myself lately: Is AI working for us, or are we working for AI?

What they found across more than 40 “in-depth” interviews was that nobody was pressured at this company. Nobody was told to hit new targets. People just started doing more because the tools made more feel doable. But because they could do these things, work began bleeding into lunch breaks and late evenings. The employees’ to-do lists expanded to fill every hour that AI freed up, and then kept going.

As one engineer told them, “You had thought that maybe, oh, because you could be more productive with AI, then you save some time, you can work less. But then really, you don’t work less. You just work the same amount or even more.”

Over on the tech industry forum Hacker News, one commenter had the same reaction, writing, “I feel this. Since my team has jumped into an AI everything working style, expectations have tripled, stress has tripled and actual productivity has only gone up by maybe 10%. It feels like leadership is putting immense pressure on everyone to prove their investment in AI is worth it and we all feel the pressure to try to show them it is while actually having to work longer hours to do so.”

The researchers’ new findings aren’t entirely novel. A separate trial last summer found experienced developers using AI tools took 19% longer on tasks while believing they were 20% faster. Around the same time, a National Bureau of Economic Research study tracking AI adoption across thousands of workplaces found that productivity gains amounted to just 3% in time savings, with no significant impact on earnings or hours worked in any occupation. Both studies have gotten picked apart.

In 2019, differences in diagnostic coding caused Medicare to pay MA plans $9 billion more than it would have spent if the same beneficiaries had been enrolled in FFS Medicare.

Excess payments to MA plans may benefit enrollees in the MA program (when used to increase the value of extra benefits offered rather than increase profits) but cost taxpayers more than if these enrollees were covered in FFS Medicare. Further, excess payments to MA plans increase fiscal pressure on the Hospital Insurance (Part A) Trust Fund as well as on the taxpayers, beneficiaries, and state Medicaid programs who pay premiums to finance the Part B program.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission We are a nonpartisan independent legislative branch agency that provides the U.S. Congress with analysis and policy advice on the Medicare program.

Fascinating that Medicare Advantage a private company healthcare plan rather than a government one where current political banter beats the drum about fraud. So these are private companies committing fraud and not government run plans.

Medicare Advantage plans offer seniors a private alternative to original Medicare. The insurance plans have grown dramatically in recent years and now enroll about 34 million members, more than half of the people eligible for Medicare.

In court filings, the government argued the health plan “pressured” doctors in Colorado and California to add diagnoses “regardless of whether these conditions were actually considered or addressed by the physician during the patient visits,” policies that violated Medicare requirements.

From 2009 through 2018, KP added roughly half a million diagnoses that generated about $1 billion in improper payments to the health plan, according to the complaint.

The KP settlement comes on the heels of a Senate report this month that accused UnitedHealth Group of “gaming” the Medicare Advantage payment system, which is called “risk adjustment.”

“My investigation has shown UnitedHealth Group appears to be gaming the system and abusing the risk adjustment process to turn a steep profit,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement accompanying the report’s release.

The report cited several medical conditions that have repeatedly been linked to overbilling by Medicare Advantage plans, such as coding for opioid dependence disorder in patients who are taking their medications as directed for pain.

The peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 74 articles on studies on the links between IQ points and fluoride. Authors of the JAMA article determined that there is a high risk of scientific bias in 52 of those studies and a low risk of bias in 22. Forty-five of the articles originated from China.

The links between fluoride and loss of intelligence show up when the fluoride levels in water are above 1.5 milligrams per liter, the JAMA review found.

“There were limited data and uncertainty in the dose-response association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ when fluoride exposure was estimated by drinking water alone at concentrations less than 1.5 mg/L,” the JAMA review said.

“That’s much higher than what we use for public water fluoridation,” said Washington state health officer Kwan-Gett.

The CDC says the recommended level for fluoride in a public water system is 0.7 milligrams per liter. Dorow pointed to the centuries-old concept that the dose of a substance often dictates whether or not it is poisonous, not the substance itself.

“There are no negative impacts at normal levels,” Kwan-Gett said.

It cited Denmark's recommendation against 10 diseases as a model for the US. But that comparison was criticised by Dr. Andrew D. Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "The United States is not Denmark, and there is no reason to impose the Danish immunization schedule on America's families. America is a unique country, and Denmark's population, public health infrastructure, and disease-risk differ greatly from our own." Denmark's population is around 6 million while the US has about 340 million people.

Republican Senator Bill Cassiday from Louisiana, who is a doctor, also criticised the new recommendation. "Changing the pediatric vaccine schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors, and will make America sicker," he said in a statement.

The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is safe and provides 97% protection against the disease after two doses. Most children in the U.S. are required to get the shot to attend school. But vaccination rates have declined as more parents waive the shots or have fallen behind on recommended vaccination schedules.

Amid a lobbying blitz and a flood of campaign cash, senators inserted language into this week’s emergency spending bill that eliminates rules designed to prevent food contamination and foodborne illnesses at farms and restaurants, according to legislative text reviewed by The Lever. The bill would also limit the development of rules to regulate ultra-processed foods, despite such foods being derided by the “Make America Healthy Again Movement,” championed by President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Last year saw a doubling of Americans who were hospitalized or killed by contaminated food outbreaks, according to data compiled by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. In all, there are now “10 million cases of foodborne illnesses annually in the United States (and) these illnesses result in about 53,300 hospitalizations and over 900 deaths,” according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office. Despite that, the new funding bill blocks federal rules designed to trace sources of outbreaks, and to prevent contamination of produce. One provision in the legislation states that no funds “may be used to administer or enforce the ‘Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods,’ published on Nov. 21, 2022.” Originally proposed by the first Trump administration during the pandemic when COVID-19 posed severe risks of contaminating food systems, the Food and Drug Administration’s traceability rule aimed to establish new record-keeping standards for companies to track their food products across the supply chain. Those records could help regulators identify the point of origin in the event of a major disease outbreak or food contamination event. The rule applied to produce, seafood, and certain dairy products, such as cheese, and exempted small businesses from the rule.