AI in the Federal Government

I was recently speaking to some Veterans Administration (VA) consultants who told me that they're seeing a big shift in the time it takes to review a veteran's disability benefits.

In the past, VA benefits could take many months of review following medical appointments. Now, the consultants are sometimes seeing VA benefits finalized within days to a couple of weeks thanks to AI.

I asked AI to expand on my two paragraph blog post and this is what it came up with:

I recently had the opportunity to speak with some consultants who work closely with the Veterans Administration (VA), and they shared some fascinating insights about a major shift happening in the way veteran disability benefits are being processed. According to them, the time it takes for the VA to review and finalize disability claims has seen a dramatic improvement, largely due to advancements in AI.

Historically, veterans applying for disability benefits often faced lengthy wait times. After completing their necessary medical evaluations, it could take many months—sometimes even longer—for their claims to be fully reviewed and approved. This extended waiting period placed a significant burden on veterans who needed timely support and resources.

However, the consultants I spoke with explained that AI is now playing a pivotal role in expediting this process. In some cases, claims that once took months to navigate through various layers of review are now being finalized in a matter of days or just a couple of weeks. AI-powered systems are helping to analyze medical records, cross-reference data, and flag key details more efficiently than traditional manual processes.

While these advancements are promising, they also raise important questions about accuracy, fairness, and the role of human oversight in decision-making. Nevertheless, for many veterans who have long struggled with bureaucratic delays, this shift represents a significant and much-needed improvement in the VA benefits system.

As AI continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how technology further reshapes government processes, particularly in areas that directly impact the lives of those who have served our country.

My Thoughts on COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

COVID-19 has a mortality rate about 40 – 60 times greater than the flu with a virus contagion rate greater than the flu. (Mortality rate for the flu is 0.07%. COVID-19 is approximately 2 – 3%)

A key difference between the flu and COVID-19 is that COVID-19 requires a higher rate of hospital stays. 1 in 5 people with COVID-19 require a hospital stay, the medium length of stay is two weeks. The flu, on the other hand, can typically be treated at home.

However, these statistics are based on reported cases of both the flu and COVID-19 and, for both, many cases go unreported. 

Conservative indications are about half a million deaths in the US, this season. That means someone you know will die from this. 

This will get so much worse before it gets better and I am not a doom and gloomer. Good luck. Hang tight. See you at the end of summer for the first wave. 

I cannot express how bad next week will be. 


I'm posting this so I came come back in a week, month, or year to see how today's expectations match the reality of this season's pandemic.

Scaling Obamacare

From a technical point, there's no way that HealthCare.gov (Obamacare) could have rolled out successfully.

Scaling a website of that magnitude, with millions of users from the git-go is unheard of. Even if Google, Facebook, and Twitter engineers developed it it would have still failed to launch smoothly.

Managing Growth

Generally, rolling out large scale websites is done in stages. When Gmail launched in 2004, it required an invitation so Google could control its growth. Facebook originally rolled out only to college students at select universities. Twitter, on the other hand, had no way to control its growth and it frequently went down (AKA: the Fail whale).

Since the world's best web engineers wouldn't have been able to launch a website like Obamacare, what made government contractors think they could do it?

Where to turn to when you're sick?

I've had a sore throat for the past week. It came on the day after I went to the San Diego Padres home game season opener, last Tuesday. No doubt that I caught something after being exposed to the crowds and eating the stadium food.

I feel fine and it doesn't feel too sore. However, my voice sounds like I've smoked a carton of cigarettes every day for the past 80 years.

Since it hasn't gotten any better (nor has it gotten worse), I left a message with my doctor's office, this morning, to see if they could recommend some over-the-counter medication. An assistant called me back a few hours later and she recommenced Mucinex.

The funny part of the phone call was when the doctor's assistant said, "I was just looking at WebMD and it says..." As she mentioned that, it conjured up the brilliant advice that my sister once gave me, "When you're sick, you go to the doctor, not the Internet."

American Health Care. Is it Un-American?

Yesterday, I spent about ten hours as a visitor (not a patient) at a hospital emergency room (ER). During that time, I heard a good number of stories. Several members of the staff told me that, for some reason, they'd been swamped since the New Year with three to six hour ER wait times for their patients. But, during my visit, I heard, first hand, the story of one patient which stood out as a symbol of our out-of-control health care costs.

Can't Breath in Japan
A young man was admitted with a breathing problem who was very pleasant until the nurse started explaining how much his ER visit would cost.

He was genuinely shocked when he was informed that his visit would cost $750, based on the hospital's flat rate level for a person in his unemployed and uninsured financial situation. He was told that this amount was a big savings when compared to an insured patient's billing. As the nurse started to explain how the costs would be billed he kept nervously interrupting her to say, "$750 is too much to charge a person to be treated".

His breathing problems began as a result of sleeping in a dusty and moldy apartment when he was in Japan, several weeks ago. He told the nurse that his hospital visit in Japan cost only $15, which also included a medical inhaler that was provided to him and instructions to stop working out for a few weeks. That treatment was working well, until the last day or so.

The young man told the nurse that he had no income, since he was unemployed, and that his hospital bill would probably end up being referred to collections. The nurse told him that, in order to qualify for any of the hospital's flat rate, reduced cost, plans, he'd have to leave a token deposit. His question, "How much do you need?" was literally answered with, "How much do you have?"

He dug around and gave her all the cash he had in his pocket: $7. Obviously, this American, who was a very fit and healthy young man, received a rude awaking to our country's health care costs.

O Canada, I'm Having a Heart Attack
Last Memorial Day, while visiting Canada, Guy Kawasaki had symptoms that mimicked a heart attack. A trip to a Canadian emergency room cost him a grand total of $853.04 with a final diagnosis of pneumonia. Guy said that his bill was about $9,000 less than he expected for his visit which included three ECGs, one blood test, one chest x-ray, two aspirins, and a few hits of nitro.

Congress, Security, and Health Care
I have no doubt that Representative Giffords is alive, after this past weekend's shooting, due to America's outstanding and world leading health care. But, does our health care have to cost as much as it does? More than $750 just to walk into an American emergency room verses $15 in Japan, or $853 in Canada for a complete ER heart attack symptom workup.

While these two examples of ER visits are cherry picked, they still represent the actual costs paid by any foreign national in the respective countries. Costs paid by local nationals would actually be less.

I'm sure that personal security is foremost on Congress's mind in the wake of this past weekend's shooting. We all hope that this shooting is a one time incident and the odds are very good that it is. Only one member of Congress has ever been assassinated in the line of duty: Congressman Leo Ryan was assassinated at Jonestown, Guyana on that faithful day in 1978 when more than 900 people drank the Kool-Aid.

But, once decisions are made regarding the security of Congress, I hope they can bring some sanity to health care costs. I'm not asking for socialized medicine (or, maybe I am, depending on your definition), but $25 for an aspirin is obscenely excessive. Do we begin with the health care providers, the health care insurance companies, the malpractice insurance companies, or our legal system? Or, do we just surrender, chalk it up as "too hard", and accept the status quo?