Bioterror Propaganda Roundup: The latest updates on the “new normal” — chronicling the lies, distortions, and abuses by the ruling class.
Dr. Oz: AI to replace doctors in Medicare, Medicaid provision
“An apple a day keeps the robot white-coats away,” went the received wisdom from my Midwestern Irish-Catholic grandmammy, which she used to serenade me with through puffs of Virginia Slims.
She had polio as a kid, she often reminded me, and seemingly ended up just fine.
Via Wired (emphasis added):
“Dr. Mehmet Oz, the new administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), spent much of his first all-staff meeting on Monday promoting the use of artificial intelligence at the agency and praising Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again Initiative,” sources tell WIRED.
During the meeting, Oz discussed possibly prioritizing AI avatars over frontline health care workers.
Oz claimed that if a patient went to a doctor for a diabetes diagnosis, it would be $100 per hour, while an appointment with an AI avatar would cost considerably less, at just $2 an hour. Oz also claimed that patients have rated the care they’ve received from an AI avatar as equal to or better than a human doctor. (Research suggests patients are actually more skeptical of medical advice given by AI.) Because of technologies like machine learning and AI, Oz claimed, it is now possible to scale “good ideas” in an affordable and fast way.”
I’m of two minds on this.
On one hand, good riddance to the majority of doctors out there— especially ones working for large healthcare systems, all the company men and women out there doing what they have to do to get paid, never rocking the boat — who proved themselves during COVID, beyond the possibility of redemption, as nothing more than rubber-stamps for pre-established protocols written by the pharmaceutical industry.
In all the ways that matter, they’re already robots for all intents and purposes, only unduly glorified and wildly overcompensated for their craft.
Related: Vaxxed Healthcare Workers 27% MORE Likely to Contract Flu: Study
(The slow metamorphosis of doctors into automatons, truth be told, began well over a century ago with the Rockefeller-commissioned Flexner Report; we just saw the full fruits manifest when the world went insane and doctors lost their medical licenses for prescribing a drug on the WHO List of Essential Medicines.)
On the other hand, handing responsibility over to literal AI instead of de facto AI in a human skinsuit removes all morality and human empathy from the equation — whatever of it can be said to still exist in the 2025 American healthcare sector.
Related: WHO Accuses Anti-Vaxxers of ‘Anti-Science Aggression,’ Calls Them ‘Killing Force’
It would certainly make pulling the plug on grandma to save a few bucks — the “death panel” that is Bill Gates’ wet dream — much easier to achieve.
Robots don’t suffer from moral dilemmas.
Then we’re also faced with the economic fallout from doing away with the largest source of human employment in the economy.
Via Bureau of Health Workforce (emphasis added):
“The health care industry employed over 17 million people in 2023, making it the largest employment sector in the United States. It comprises a wide range of skilled professionals with varying levels of education and training. In 2022, the United States spent $13,493 per person on health care, which amounts to 17.3% of its gross domestic product (GDP). Health care spending in the United States is higher than in any other major economy, both in absolute dollar terms and relative to GDP.”
17 million workers and their families tossed, virtually overnight, onto a proverbial breadline — even if it’s true that they have objectively failed in their mission to improve health while hoovering up ungodly oodles of cash in the process — would represent, potentially, economic Armageddon.
But that’s only a problem if economic Armageddon isn’t actually a means to a greater end — the establishment of a global, totalitarian, technocratic mega-state that outstrips George Orwell’s wildest nightmares.
Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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