During a House Energy Committee hearing last week, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) asked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about uses for artificial intelligence in healthcare.
00:04I particularly appreciate your enthusiasm for using artificial intelligence to enhance productivity at HHS.
00:11I think in your testimony you said the AI revolution has arrived, and we would agree with you.
00:16I was the chairman of the House Artificial Intelligence Task Force last year,
00:20and we produced a report in December that had a whole chapter on health care
00:24because we believe that there is no industry in the United States that's going to be more radically transformed by AI than health care.
00:33You also testified about the health care cost challenges that we're facing in this country,
00:39the fact that we spend between two and three times per capita what other developed countries do,
00:45and we achieve worse health care outcomes, and I think you and I share a belief that AI can help with that.
00:50So I am delighted that you are applying AI to make HHS more efficient.
00:55I think you testified you're using it to expedite drug approvals, which is wonderful.
01:00I'm wondering, though, how we can catalyze attacking it from the provider standpoint
01:06because we have physicians that spend twice as much time on administration as they do on patient care,
01:13and we've got reports from think tanks that indicate that if we utilize AI effectively,
01:18we can cut 10 percent off of the cost of providing health care to Americans.
01:23So what can HHS do to catalyze the adoption of AI and the securing of those benefits on the provider side?
01:32We are doing that at every level of the department, and I'm surprised it's only 10 percent.
01:37It's just the ways fraud and abuse, and particularly the fraud, AI has the capacity to detect fraud now.
01:46We're using it in the department for that reason.
01:49We're using it for diagnostics.
01:52We're using it for paperwork.
01:55The agreement that I made yesterday with the pharmaceutical companies should cut off much more than that from paperwork from doctors.
02:02And so we are using it everywhere that we can, and we hope to drive it into the health care system in this country at every level, including the providers.
02:16Right.
02:16Well, I think that there's no more powerful pulpit for evangelizing that than the post that you hold,
02:23and so I hope that you will help drive that because it's not enough that just HHS uses AI to include its productivity.
02:31We need to make sure we get this adopted within industry and within the provider community.
02:37And a follow-up question on that.
02:40I've talked to stakeholders across the industry about what they're doing to use AI, using AI to improve health care.
02:50There is a large level of frustration with organizations like CMS, and I don't think it's intentional.
02:56I just think it's a big bureaucracy, and they're kind of hidebound, where someone comes up with a really revolutionary AI-based,
03:03I don't know, a diagnostic tool or a treatment option, but there just isn't a combination in the system for it.
03:08There isn't a billing code, or there isn't a recognition that these can lead to cost savings.
03:15So, you know, obviously we want to be good stewards of taxpayer money as well,
03:19but how can we change the rules to make sure that we're saving the money that we should be saving with AI?
03:26We need people at Medicare, at Medicaid, and at CMS, a leadership that is absolutely committed to this transformation.
03:37And we have that today.
03:39We have Dr. Oz, we have Chris Klomp, who came out of the tech arena and is now using his knowledge to transform what we do there.
03:51People send me, every day of the week, people are sending me innovative ideas that sound wonderful,
03:56and we have a way to screen those now.
03:59I send them over to Chris Klomp, I send them over to Clark Miner.
04:02We brought people in just to do AI and that kind of transformation.
04:07And those ideas are being explored one at a time, and the ones that work are being introduced and integrated into our system.
04:17So we're doing that today.
04:18You're going to see major changes over the next four years.
04:23Well, I'm very happy to hear that.
04:25I think it's going to require a partnership between the executive branch and us here in the legislative branch to make that possible.
04:32And if you haven't read the health section of our task force report, I'd encourage you to peruse that,
04:37because we're going to need to work together to get this done.
