This is not a slam on physician's assistants. They are like dental hygienists in that the latter and the former both have skills and training and provide services. The gyp arises from the fact that a PA (or a hygienist) doesn't have the skill and training that a doctor does and so you ought not be charged the same for seeing them vs. the doctor.

Particularly when you came to see the doctor.

Well, what's the new gyp?

How about getting charged to speak to a machine when you call to speak to the dealer? According to an article published the other day by Futurism, car dealerships are using AI to handle service appointment calls. The why is obvious. AI doesn't earn a salary or have to be paid benefits like a human would expect. So instead of spending money on a human to handle your inquiries, you'll talk to the AI hand!

This was probably inevitable.

Can anyone remember talking to a human "customer service" representative when there's some issue with something you bought or your credit card? Usually, you have to talk to a kind of first generation, retarded iteration of AI known as the phone tree, that prompts you with insipid commands to push 1 for Yes or 2 for No and 3 to Repeat the Message. It is sometimes possible to get around the phone tree to a human but only after first playing push-the-button for while. Then, maybe, you'll get a human you can't understand because it's some exotic foreigner at a "call center" in a country on the other side of the world.

According to Futurism, a company called Toma – described as "an AI voice agent startup" – has "pivoted from pitching to healthcare and finance companies to fielding calls from automotive salespeople desperate to offload some of their labor to AI agents."

AI agents? In the Matrix (movie) sense? Yep, except it's not a movie. It's reality. However artificial.