AI: To Regulate, or Not to Regulate?
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
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The speaker describes how Optum's acuity tool exhibited bias by using cost as a proxy for health needs, systematically underestimating needs for Black patients despite accurate math and data, a flaw not visible to clinicians using the tool.
The speaker reports that the whole frame of reference for reimbursement codes and levels for physicians, interventions, and devices needs to be rethought
The speaker reports that the FDA is considering a regulatory trade-off for generative AI-enabled medical devices: accepting greater pre-market uncertainty in exchange for enhanced post-market monitoring using real-world data and AI systems, similar to long-standing pharmaceutical approval practices.
Across the tech industry, many of AI's own leaders are calling for oversight — self-imposed or from government. That debate is on, but where it will land is anyone's guess. Joe Grogan takes a different tack: the biggest threat in health care AI may not be too little regulation, but the wrong kind. And he has seen regulation from the seats where it gets made: the White House Domestic Policy Council, the federal health care budget at OMB, and before Washington, the industry side of bringing a cure for Hepatitis C to patients. Chip and Grogan discuss the federal government's proper role in regulating generative AI, the growing patchwork of state AI laws, why CMS reimbursement structures need to change, and how Europe's cautious approach is impeding the technology's growth. Grogan closes with his two biggest worries: fear-driven policy that bans innovation outright, and the risk to patients' most sensitive data as AI's appetite for it grows. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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