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When Blue Cross Blue Shield recently published research suggesting that hospitals use artificial intelligence tools to extract more money from insurers without providing additional care, people were mad. Amid growing concerns about AI, one glimmer of hope has been its potential to improve health — and yet, here it was: inflating health care costs without yielding any benefits. (Leah Pierson, 10/6)

As Washington and Beijing tussle for dominance in frontier technologies, there’s one area in which competition shouldn’t preclude collaboration: innovative medicines. Beijing’s latest five-year plan for the biotechnology sector details how the country wants to lead the field globally. Unusually for an industrial blueprint, it comes with numeric targets. (Juliana Liu, 10/5)

Assisted dying accounts for more than 5 percent of deaths in Canada. (Gary Rodin and Madeline Li, 10/5)

What doctors on the front lines are seeing should serve as a warning to other states. (Leana S. Wen, 10/6)

51ÊÓƵ Health News: Witnessing The Failed Execution Of Christa Pike: 'We Could All Hear Her Breathing' 

On Sept. 30, I was one of the seven media witnesses who observed Tennessee fail to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike, the first woman to face the death penalty in the state in almost 200 years. From our previous reporting, each of us had an inkling that the lethal injection process might not go according to plan. Pike’s attorneys had asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to allow her to be hanged instead, citing concerns that a platelet disorder and small veins would make the actual injection not only painful but ineffective. (Catherine Sweeney, 10/6)