Government warns Medicare Advantage insurers not to deny care based on AI

In recent months, the federal government has repeatedly told Medicare Advantage insurers that they cannot use artificial intelligence or algorithms to deny medical services the government routinely covers.

But in finalizing a rule to that effect, it also stepped into a thicket of questions from insurers about a technology that is especially difficult to pin down: What is AI? Can it be used at all to make decisions about the coverage of older patients? If so, how?

This week, the federal agency that oversees Medicare sought to boil it all down into a simple directive: Put the circumstances of the individual patient first, and your algorithm second.