AI ‘nihilism’ is a barrier to better health care, CMS lead says

Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz attends a tour of a Thermo Fisher Scientific facility on March 11, 2026 in Reading, Ohio. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

LAS VEGAS — Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform the delivery of healthcare services across the U.S., but patient distrust of the technology’s capabilities needs to be met with a greater response by clinicians on how it can maximize medical care, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said on Thursday. 

During a keynote session at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said new tools like AI can radically improve the delivery of care from rural communities to large cities, but that “our biggest — and your biggest — challenge is nihilism.”

He said internal data collected from querying Medicare patients found that they still do not trust AI — a ...