Trust the Robot
A study popped up last week that raised a few eyebrows, and made the rounds on the interweb and cable news: U.S. citizens, according to one study, don’t trust their doctors.
I know, shocker, right? “The poll of 2,000 adults finds many will turn to the web for “accurate” information regarding their health before asking their physician.” It seems patients would rather turn to online sources including AI to understand health insurance, their symptoms, to maintain privacy, or to get a second opinion.
Dig this kaleidoscopic statement from UserTesting spokesbeing Lija Hogan: ““The PX — or patient experience — is not just about the relationship between patients and providers … Healthcare journeys include digital touchpoints that extend beyond scheduling appointments or remote visits. Americans are using AI as a means to help them navigate a complex experience with more information that is understandable and relevant to them – and that they feel is trustworthy.”
And there you have it. The PX really no longer requires physicians, and tekkies and patients are telling us that straight up. Read the rest of this and you’ll see that a plurality is happy to have AI diagnose major conditions, and wearable health monitoring tech heavily influenced a large majority of the respondents in their views. It makes sense, given that the majority of people long ago consigned the manipulation of their bodies and psyches to Big Government, Big Tech, and Big Pharma.
“Overall, 78 percent state they’re “confident” that AI and tech companies would protect their health information.” And I can state with unbounded confidence that those 78% are idiots who deserve what they get, but they’ll probably be too indoctrinated, programmed, hardwired, and latest-patch-updated to know or care when their bovine trust is utterly betrayed.
“’Doctors and patients need to figure out together how AI can play the best role in healthcare journey,’ continues Hogan.” Why? You just told us that you don’t need doctors any longer, and patients agree with you, so why play for the easy letdown?
Hogan stipulated above, “…that they feel is trustworthy,” and the sad, monumental fact is that patients do not trust physicians. And why should they? For decades we have been working for not the best interests of the individual, but for those of Third-Party Payers. Every time any of us – and we ALL did – spent an extra quantum of mental energy adding enough ROS items or checking a social history bloc to make sure that we legitimately satisfied the highest possible coding level, we sold out the patient. Sure, we can rationalize it all we like, that we had to keep the doors open, that fewer patients would get care if we didn’t play these games, etc. And like the very best rationalizations, ours were true, but they did not erase our dishonesty.
The loss of trust in physicians is I argue, cumulative. We progressed from the Golden Age white coat sages who charged some and treated others for free based on the dictates of our consciences, to the processing plants of Medicare/Medicaid and the Rise of Big Insurance, followed by all of the phony economics, waste, and genuine suffering that this society deserves. We helped sell patients on these lies, and when the “rich doctor playing golf every Wednesday” stereotype had long since passed into fiction, there was enough mistrust that became class envy to keep that caricature alive to this very day. None of us trust the horrible mazes of health insurance, and why should any patient trust a doctor who doesn’t understand them nor can explain them as well as ChatGPT? As we allowed third party payers to dehumanize patients, so was our value as individuals to individual patients diminished in like measure. We handed over our financial ethics to CMS and Blue Cross, in ways so massively worse that they dwarfed the free drug rep lunches the do gooder academics bitched out of existence. And we surrendered our clinical judgment to top-down, central party control that would have made Stalin’s wheat-stealing thugs smile in the pride of being emulated. The fact that we did it to eat, pay the mortgage, and generally survive is exactly what the collectivists were counting on. It is a reason, but it’s no excuse.
What happened recently in the past, oh, four years, that might have destroyed patient trust in the medical profession? Throughout the recent Panic, this profession lied to patients at every step, and whether our motives were good or cowardly, we earned the liar’s reward. Perhaps it is rational that having recognized that they cannot trust trained humans, patients now turn to an honestly soulless source.
And if you think I’m up on my pious high horse, you’re wrong. I’ve got another shift tomorrow and gotta make sure I document as completely as possible.
To look more broadly at the doom of our civilization:
“ There are only two conceptions of human ethics and they are at opposite poles.
One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units.
The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands,
that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community which may dispose of it as an
experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb.
The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality.
Whoever is burdened with power and responsibility finds out on the first occasion that he has to choose; and he is
fatally driven to the second alternative.”
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Koestler had no Christian indoctrination, but was a solid Marxist-Leninist who did not have a preconceived loyalty to or familiarity with Christianity except as an opiate for the masses. He once believed that secular reasoning would overthrow the superstitions of old. And here he is now, warning us in a novel eighty years old, about modern medicine as clearly as did Francis Peabody.
The problem cannot be resolved piecemeal for the corruption is pervasive.
All AI represents is the automation of the algorithms of vivisection, so that the perpetrators can externalize any sense of guilt, and malign the subjects of vivisection as undeserving animals. AI does not need computers, only algorithms for processing human units. The most noteworthy AI of the last century was the camp processing algorithms of the Third Reich; all done on paper.
AI only allows for the myth that we are slaves of the machine. We are not, but the silicon thing does not feel uncomfortable for taking the blame.
AI cannot be accused of true intelligence until it considers Koestler’s Postulate and acts to benefit humanity.
Don’t you understand….we are simply providers
The lack of trust is self-induced.
When you threaten, coerce, intimidate, lie, disrespect and discriminate, there will be repercussions.
The patient want what they want not what’s best for them. They want you to get insurance to cover the expensive drug they saw on TV or the latest weight loss drug that they don’t qualify. 20 years ago they wanted you to give them narcotics cuz it was their right to relieve pain. If their insurance doesn’t cover a procedure it’s your fault that you didn’t argue hard enough. If the procedure causes pain or doesn’t get the expected results it’s because the doctor didn’t do it right because they see it on TV and it didn’t cause pain and it was perfect.