Urgent Saturday Message: Trump's Launches AI Death Panels!

Trump is implementing a devastating, dystopian plan to make Medicare more like private insurance

In the past, it was a common PR tactic to release bad news just before a holiday weekend, when the public typically consumed less news. Friday night broadcast and cable shows drew lower ratings. The Saturday newspaper was always the least read. Most of the Sunday show anchors were off. By the time everyone checked back in on Monday, the story was old news. And no one cared.

On The West Wing, they called this very real strategy “taking out the trash.” I used to do it all the time. The longer or more eventful the holiday, the better. The Friday before the Super Bowl was always a great time to bury bad news.

I bring this up because on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, the Trump Administration dropped some politically devastating news.

No, it wasn’t the Epstein files or a new corrupt scheme or authoritarian move. Instead, it was the sort of news that matters a great deal to people, even if they don’t follow politics as closely as we do.

As the New York Times reported, Trump plans to utilize AI to deny Medicare services to patients.

In other words, Trump wants to Make America Great Again by implementing “AI Death Panels.” Seriously.

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What Trump Is Doing

Medicare is one of the most successful and popular government programs in U.S. history. One reason for its popularity is that it’s far more user-friendly than private insurance. Medicare covers more procedures and tests. With private insurance, you often need prior authorization for even basic medical procedures — an unwieldy process that takes too long and can result in inexplicable denials, even when a doctor recommends treatment.

Now, the Trump Administration is launching a pilot program that would make Medicare more like private insurance. According to the New York Times:

“The federal government plans to hire private companies to use artificial intelligence to determine whether patients would be covered for some procedures, like certain spine surgeries or steroid injections. Similar algorithms used by insurers have been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits, which have asserted that the technology allowed the companies to swiftly deny large batches of claims and cut patients off from care in rehabilitation facilities.”

The six states participating in the program are Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington. That means health care decisions for Medicare patients in those states will now be made by AI algorithms from for-profit tech companies.

What makes this initiative even more dystopian is that the AI companies will get a cut of the savings they generate. That creates a powerful incentive to deny more treatments. The worse it is for patients, the more money these companies make. It’s a cut to Medicare services designed to enrich tech barons. And while we don’t trust a word Trump says, this blatantly breaks his oft-repeated promise to protect Medicare.

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Why This Is So Politically Toxic

There’s a political history to Trump’s AI death panels. Back when President Obama was trying to pass the Affordable Care Act, Republicans successfully spread the conspiracy theory that the bill contained “death panels.”

The provision in question simply called for Medicare to reimburse doctors who engaged in end-of-life counseling with patients — conversations about advance directives, living wills, and do-not-resuscitate orders. That was not a “death panel.” It was a way to ensure patients could have important, difficult conversations with their doctors without worrying about paying out of pocket.

But that didn’t stop Republicans. They relentlessly pushed the “death panel” lie. And I can call it a lie because in 2009 PolitiFact named it the Lie of the Year.

Sarah Palin (still relevant at the time) claimed people would “have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.” Senator Grassley (who was old and feeble back then too) accused Obama of “pulling the plug on Grandma.” Republican partisans stormed Democratic town halls screaming about death panels, and GOP campaigns bludgeoned Democrats for voting for “death panels,” even though the provision had been removed from the bill.

What Trump is doing now is far worse — more nefarious, and more dangerous — than what Republicans performatively freaked out about in 2009.

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What Democrats Can Do About It

As you can probably tell by the tone and timing of this newsletter, I think this is a pretty big deal. It’s terrible policy, but it’s also a political opportunity that I want every Democrat to seize.

Here’s what we can do:

1. Brand it clearly. Democrats should call this provision “AI Death Panels for Medicare” (a term coined by my Pod Save America colleague Tommy Vietor). We need a catchy phrase that can go viral. Don’t be afraid to demagogue this with aggressive memes and social media posts.

2. Force a vote. Congressional Democrats should push to eliminate this provision. They should also hammer RFK Jr. when he appears at a Senate hearing next week.

3. Talk about it. All of us can raise this with our friends and family. The old PR tactic of “taking out the trash” may be outdated. It worked in an era when people depended on traditional media and consumed less news over holiday weekends. But today, the most important political conversations happen with friends and family. Holiday weekends can actually be terrible times to disclose bad news, because people are gathered at barbecues, parades, and picnics — sharing information with each other. In that context, something like “AI Death Panels” could spread like wildfire.

That’s why I’m invading your inbox on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, even though every metric says this is a terrible day to send out a political newsletter. If you happened to open and read this, I hope you’ll use this information if the opportunity arises this weekend.

Thank you, and have a great last weekend of the summer.