New Records Reveal Problems with Medicare’s AI Prior Authorization Experiment

EFF sued the government back in March for information about the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) model , a new Medicare program that uses AI to evaluate prior authorization requests for certain medical services. Today, we’re releasing approximately 1,000 pages of records obtained from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) through this litigation, including contracts with tech companies, internal status reports and providers’ complaints about the program. The documents (available here ) show that WISeR has resulted in widespread delays and denials of care, operational chaos, and reports of patient harm. Why We Sued for Records about WISeR EFF filed the FOIA lawsuit to gain badly needed transparency into an experimental AI program that could jeopardize Medicare beneficiaries' access to care. In January 2026, CMS launched the WISeR model, subjecting seniors in six states to AI-driven prior authorization decisions. Medical providers must now request permission before delivering certain medical treatments if they want assurance that Medicare will cover them. Private companies contracted by CMS evaluate the requests using AI. In the absence of rigorous safeguards, AI-driven prior authorization determinations can lead to unwarranted—and even discriminatory—delays or denials of necessary medical care. Little is known about the AI systems that WISeR vendors are using to process prior authorization requests. Although CMS says that a qualified human cli…