AI-guided decisions can devastate lower-income Americans. This group wants to change that
Nov. 20, 2024
Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow
In 2016, the Arkansas Legal Aid Center was flooded with calls. People on a Medicaid program that provided in-home care assistance were having their caregiving hours cut. Reducing the hours for somebody with quadriplegia or cerebral palsy was devastating, said Kevin De Liban, an attorney with the organization at the time.
“People are lying in their own waste, people are getting bed sores from not being turned. They’re being totally shut in and shut out of the world — and they don’t know why,” said De Liban. “When they ask the state’s nurse, ‘Why are you cutting my hours?’ The state’s nurse would just say, ‘It’s not me, it’s the computer.’”
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The Arkansas Department of Human Services had implemented a new computerized tool for determining eligibility, but hadn’t told anyone. Disabled recipients of this care fought the state for improperly reducing their hours, and won.
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