Proposed Senate bill offers ideas for regs and reimbursement of health AI

Senator Bill Cassidy has a plan, and the plan is ideas. The PATIENT AI Act, as reported by Healthcare IT News, would "offer ideas for regs and reimbursement of health AI" — a legislative achievement roughly equivalent to a colleague poking their head round the door to say we should probably think about this at some point, then going for lunch. One does admire the ambition of a Senate bill whose headline deliverable is brainstorming.

The stated goal is to expand access to AI technologies with "regulatory predictability while prioritizing patient safety", which is the statutory equivalent of a sandwich advertised as containing both ham and safety. Regulatory predictability is the phrase a lobbyist whispers when they mean: tell us now precisely what we're allowed to do, then don't revise it while we scale. Patient safety gets the second clause, which is where patient safety traditionally sits — behind the access and ahead of the press release. And the enforcement mechanism? Cassidy would call on HHS to "further implement AI internally and release guidance" on privacy and security. Guidance. Not statute, not liability, not a fine with a number attached — a document with a friendly typeface.

Then there is "proposed", and the word "ideas" in the headline again, and the fact that reimbursement is the only vocabulary American healthcare genuinely respects. Cassidy is a physician, which is why the report calls him "Sen. Dr. Bill Cassidy, R-La." — two titles in front of the name, as though the second one might be the one doing the work. A doctor knows exactly what a guidance document is worth next to a billing code, and knows which of the two gets negotiated first. Meanwhile HHS is invited to automate itself and, separately, to publish some thoughts about privacy — which is like being asked to install a very modern lock and also to write a poem about it.