{"id":560457,"date":"2026-03-24T05:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T05:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/560457\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T05:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T05:19:11","slug":"ai-is-exacerbating-americans-distrust-in-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/560457\/","title":{"rendered":"AI is exacerbating Americans\u2019 distrust in health care"},"content":{"rendered":"

After\u00a0OpenAI<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Anthropic<\/a>\u00a0launched dedicated health care initiatives in January, a\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0published in February found that OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT\u00a0Health\u00a0had a 50% error rate, incorrectly recommending that\u00a0care\u00a0be delayed in emergency test cases half the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That error rate, which was not identified before the app was rolled out, is a symptom of a broader problem: the rapid adoption of\u00a0AI\u00a0systems by health care systems and insurers, often skipping essential testing to determine how well these systems work and how safe they are for patients. This\u00a0push\u00a0to expand AI in health care is intensifying an existing\u00a0trust\u00a0crisis.<\/p>\n

The decline of\u00a0trust\u00a0in\u00a0health\u00a0care\u00a0in the U.S. has been ongoing and was worsened by the institutional responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. A\u00a0national survey<\/a>\u00a0of more than 443,000 U.S. adults found\u00a0trust\u00a0in physicians and hospitals fell more than 30 percentage points between 2020 and 2024, from 72% to 40%, with declines across multiple sociodemographic groups. For\u00a0Black<\/a>,\u00a0Latine<\/a>, and Indigenous<\/a> communities, this collapse layers onto preexisting medical mistrust rooted in a legacy and ongoing history of medical racism in the U.S. health care system. Research shows that patients who distrust their\u00a0health\u00a0care\u00a0providers are more likely to\u00a0delay\u00a0care<\/a>, including preventive screenings, and\u00a0discontinue their medications<\/a>, and that those patterns are associated with\u00a0higher rates of hospitalization and premature death<\/a>.<\/p>\n

AI\u2019s documented harms compound this mistrust. For example, a widely cited algorithm<\/a>\u00a0affecting an estimated 200 million Americans systematically underestimated how sick Black patients were, after using medical expenses as a measure for illness. Patients were unaware that this tool was being used to determine the level of their\u00a0care. Medicare Advantage insurers used\u00a0AI\u00a0tools that helped to double their denial rate for elderly patients<\/a>; about 75% of the denials were overturned on appeal<\/a>, but fewer than 1% of patients ever appealed. The federal government has since launched a pilot of\u00a0AI-enabled prior authorization<\/a>\u00a0into traditional Medicare in six states.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tWould you trust AI to renew your drug prescriptions?<\/a><\/p>\n

Health care, accounting for $5.3 trillion or 18% of the GDP in 2024<\/a>, is being heavily pursued by the\u00a0AI\u00a0industry. U.S.\u00a0health\u00a0organizations spent\u00a0$1.4 billion on\u00a0AI\u00a0tools in 2025<\/a>, nearly three times what they spent the previous year, for a range of functions, including analyzing medical images and automating billing and documentation. In addition to potential profits, the sector also provides what\u00a0AI\u00a0companies need to operate and, in many cases, to build and improve their systems: data, and a lot of it. This includes data in the form of electronic\u00a0health\u00a0records, insurance claims, diagnostic images, and genetic profiles of hundreds of millions of Americans, often collected without meaningful transparency about how it will be used and with no input from patients and communities.<\/p>\n

The data show that\u00a0AI\u2019s rapid adoption in\u00a0health\u00a0care\u00a0is worsening the mistrust that Americans already have about our\u00a0health\u00a0care\u00a0system.\u00a0A February 2025 study<\/a>\u00a0that surveyed more than 2,000 Americans found that 66% reported low\u00a0trust\u00a0in their health care system to use\u00a0AI\u00a0responsibly, and 58% reported that their health care system would ensure an\u00a0AI\u00a0tool would not harm them.<\/p>\n

Neither knowledge about\u00a0AI\u00a0nor\u00a0health\u00a0literacy changed these findings. The most important predictor was how much someone already trusted the health care system.<\/p>\n

In a nationally representative survey<\/a>, most patients said they wanted to know when\u00a0AI\u00a0was used in their diagnosis and treatment, yet there is no federal law requiring disclosure, and only a handful of states currently have laws to address this. When patients are not informed about what is happening to them or their data, and no one is required to share that information with them, it impacts all patients, but particularly those communities with the least\u00a0trust\u00a0to lose.<\/p>\n

Patients who have\u00a0experienced discrimination in\u00a0health\u00a0care<\/a>\u00a0are significantly less likely to\u00a0trust\u00a0health\u00a0systems to use\u00a0AI\u00a0responsibly. Rolling out\u00a0AI\u00a0systems without meaningfully involving patients and communities in the decision-making only repeats the pattern that led to the mistrust in the first place.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"\"\/
\n\t\t\t\tSTAT Plus: Sometimes, it would be unethical not to use AI in medicine<\/a><\/p>\n

What needs to change is who contributes to decisions about how\u00a0AI\u00a0tools are purchased, governed, and used. Patients and community members need formal decision-making roles, not just advisory positions.\u00a0Health\u00a0care\u00a0systems and insurers need to publicly report performance, including across different racial\/ethnic groups, before\u00a0AI\u00a0tools are rolled out. Patients need to be told clearly and in advance when\u00a0AI\u00a0is being used in their\u00a0care. These are the basic conditions for a trustworthy system.<\/p>\n

Health\u00a0care\u00a0systems and companies can make different choices, choices that earn the\u00a0trust\u00a0of their patients and the communities they serve. They have the capacity to move fast. The harder work is moving at the speed of\u00a0trust. That means patients and community members have a say before these systems are even purchased, not after harm has been done.<\/p>\n

Oni Blackstock, M.D., M.H.S., is a physician-researcher, founder and executive director of\u00a0Health\u00a0Justice, and a Public Voices fellow on technology in the public interest with the OpEd Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After\u00a0OpenAI\u00a0and\u00a0Anthropic\u00a0launched dedicated health care initiatives in January, a\u00a0study\u00a0published in February found that OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT\u00a0Health\u00a0had a 50% error rate,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[254,64,63,11587,137,500,10557],"class_list":["post-560457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ethics","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-patients"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}