AI Might Help Doctors Be More Efficient and Lower Medical Costs

At September’s National Conservatism Conference, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) argued AI “threatens the common man’s liberty” and that “only humans should advise on critical medical treatments.” Yet AI promises to enhance the human experience by reducing the price of critical services like health care.

The price of medical care has outpaced the consumer price index by 35 percentage points since 2000. The real culprit isn’t administrative bloat but, as George Mason University economics professor Alex
Tabarrok and his Why Are the Prices So Damn High? co-author Eric Helland explain, the Baumol effect. As other sectors become more efficient, the relative cost of slow-growth sectors (such as health care and education) increases. In other words, doctors haven’t gotten “faster” at healing people, so the relative price of their time climbs.

Fortunately, AI tools can make doctors more efficient. A Northwestern University clinical study found that generative AI sped up radiology documentation by 15.5 percent. Even modest boosts like that could reduce overall medical costs.

Beyond health care, AI’s impact on bureaucracy looks even more promising. A 2024 study by the Alan Turing Institute found that 84 percent of the U.K. government’s 143 million routine processes are “highly automatable.” Researchers estimate that saving an average of one minute per transaction would free up “the equivalent of approximately 2 million working hours per year.” A follow-up paper published in June 2025 showed where AI could help most: Email tasks (estimated at 30 minutes per public sector worker per day) could be cut by 70 percent, and updating records or databases (estimated at 15 minutes per day) could be nearly eliminated.

To be sure, time saved doesn’t always equal more work done. A May 2025 University of Chicago study found that AI chatbots shaved off about 2.8 percent of workers’ time but “had minimal impact on productivity and labor market outcomes to date.” Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, projects AI will increase productivity by only 0.55 percent over the next decade.

Even if AI doesn’t spark a productivity boom, it can still reduce the daily grind. In health care, AI assistance means faster diagnosis of potentially life-threatening conditions. It’s not a panacea, but it is progress, and Congress shouldn’t stand in the way.

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