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From reading the latest headlines, you might think that Americans are turning their backs on alcohol. Recently, a poll showed that only 54% of Americans ever drink—the lowest share on record since Gallup started tracking this in the 1930s. |
But while Gen Z and Millennials are embracing drier lifestyles, sobriety is not trendy among older folks. My colleague Jeffrey Kluger reports on a new study finding that Americans ages 50-64 are actually drinking more than they used to—not less. |
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TODAY’S TOPICS |
Another health insurance shakeup AI can help you be a better patient An alcohol knowledge gap Alternatives to animal testing
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BIG NUMBER |
760,000 |
The number of people who were un-enrolled from the federal health insurance marketplace in the government’s latest effort to crack down on fraud. The Trump Administration claims that these enrollments are unauthorized, though Democrats and Republicans have argued over how much fraud exists in the health insurance marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act. —Alana Semuels, Senior Correspondent |
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SPONSORED |
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Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor are on every engineer's stack. Most still treat them like a search bar. Top engineers work from a system, these 100+ prompts are that system. Sign up for The Code and get the prompts free, plus a 5-minute daily newsletter to keep sharpening your edge. |
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PLEASE ADVISE |
Here’s a great question we received from a reader: |
AI sometimes gives me more helpful questions and explanations than I receive during a rushed doctor’s appointment. Will AI eventually replace some office visits—and how can patients use it without putting their health at risk? |
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OsakaWayne Studios—Getty Images |
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I understand the appeal. AI doesn’t glance at the clock, cut you off after your second question, or make you feel sheepish for asking what “mildly elevated” actually means. It will keep explaining until you understand—or until it confidently explains something that isn’t true. |
That last part is the problem. Dr. Anahita Dua, a vascular surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School who has completed specialized training in health care AI, tells patients to think of it as “a very knowledgeable assistant that sometimes makes things up.” Let it help you prepare, organize, and understand, she suggests—but don’t give it the authority to make high-stakes medical decisions. |
Before an appointment, AI can arrange a jumble of symptoms into a timeline and help you create a list of questions. Try these prompts: “Organize these symptoms into a timeline I can show my doctor,” or “What information should I have ready for an appointment about migraines?” Afterward, you might ask AI to explain an unfamiliar term in plain English or “turn my doctor’s instructions into a checklist without adding new medical advice.” That last part matters: You want help understanding your doctor’s plan, not a brand-new plan invented by a chatbot. |
Be stingy with personal information. Don’t enter your full name, birth date, address, Social Security number, insurance details, or complete medical records into a consumer chatbot, Dua advises. Give it only the information it needs for the limited task at hand. |
AI should also stay out of emergencies. Chest pain, difficulty breathing, signs of a stroke, severe bleeding, loss of consciousness, a severe allergic reaction, suicidal thoughts, or rapidly worsening symptoms require medical attention—not a lengthy conversation with Dr. Chatbot. Dua’s gut check is simple: “If you’re wondering, ‘Could waiting be dangerous?’ don’t let AI make that decision for you.” The same goes for starting or stopping medication or deciding that a persistent symptom doesn’t need to be examined. |
As for whether AI will replace office visits, Dua believes it will change what happens around an appointment much faster than it replaces the appointment itself. Medicine isn’t simply matching a list of symptoms with a diagnosis. A doctor can examine you, feel your pulse, look at imaging, and notice the seemingly insignificant detail you didn’t think to mention. If AI gives you information that conflicts with what your doctor said, bring it in and ask: “I asked AI about this, and here’s what it told me. Does that seem reasonable to you?” Doing so can lead to a productive conversation. |
You don’t have to choose between using new technology and trusting an actual human doctor. The safest approach is to let AI help you become a better-prepared patient—without confusing a patient assistant for a physician. –Angela Haupt, Editor, Health & Wellness |
Got a social dilemma of your own? Send it our way to healthmatters@time.com, and we might tackle it in a future edition. |
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WHAT WE’RE READING |
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration published new rules today for using alternative methods, other than animals, to test whether experimental drugs are safe enough to test in humans. A new study out today finds that Europe's blistering heat waves over the past few years were worsened by greenhouse gases emitted since the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, Simmone Shah reports for TIME. What excited you as a kid? Rainesford Stauffer returned to a childhood hobby and found a nostalgic sense of connection to who she once was, she writes for TIME.
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