21 ms·

Be Healthy or Else: How Corporations Became Obsessed with Fitness Tracking

103 points by colinprince 10y ago

samfisher83 10y ago
Companies need to control healthcare costs which are quite high in the US. Things like screening etc. theoretically should help by catching diseases earlier starting prevention earlier.
- mamon 10y ago
  The original sin here is that healthcare insurance is managed by a company instead of the government. That gives an employer too much power over their employees. In Europe healthcare costs are just another tax, which rate is set by goverment and your employer is just responsible for substracting that from your salary and transfering to government's bank account, but has no say about how much you should pay.The plus side is that your employer simply does not give a damn about your lifestyle choices.
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    > The plus side is that your employer simply does not give a damn about your lifestyle choices. Employers still want you to be healthy because they don't want you taking days off work sick. In-service death benefits from heart attacks or whatever could be hundreds of thousands of euros and they still pay them even if you have a national health service. It's probably cheaper to pay for a gym than sick days and in-death benefits.
    - y_u_no_rust 10y ago
      Agreed, but I also think companies should look into a more tiered healthcare policy one blanket policy for everyone is silly lower wage earners should be on the cheaper plans.. the less they make the more replaceable they usually are anyway
    - mamon 10y ago
      You are partialy right, some employers will still care about your well being, but the point is that 1. Not all employers will care, and that fact alone gives you some choice. 2. Even employers that do care can only encourage you to live healty lifestyle but cannot punish you for not following their recomendations (financialy or otherwise)
  - coredog64 10y ago
    Can we please not do this? There is no homogenized health insurance scheme across Europe. Switzerland has a different setup compared to Germany, which is different from France, which is different from the UK. If you want to speak intelligently on the subject, identify a country and compare and contrast with the US.
    - dumb-saint 10y ago
      They are the same for the purpose of the argument being made above.
  - spectrum1234 10y ago
    No the original sin is healthcare is not respected as a market. In the US you can't get lower tier quality for a lower price. Literally every other industry has this. In Europe HC costs are going up as well so your argument is invalid.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    You left out the third option: health insurance managed by the individual. Unfortunately has basically been eliminated as a choice by the ACA, as most of the affordable individual plans didn't qualify even if they were what the buyer wanted.
crazygringo 10y ago
> Those who don’t reach the targets in three categories have to pay an extra $1,000 a year toward their health insurance. It sounds a lot less sinister if you rephrase it: And those who reach targets in three categories get an extra $1,000 on their paycheck, that comes from the discount on their health insurance. This kind of data should not be known/tracked by your employer ever, for reasons of privacy. That's totally different from your health plan knowing, however. The deep question here, regarding all health insurance (including national schemes), is -- to what extent should you be expected to subsidize other people's intentionally unhealthy life choices? To what extent should people who make these unhealthy choices be forced to pay more for them? If I get diabetes because I drank 20 cokes a day... But it gets even harder, because who defines healthy? The long-term effects of so many activities is so unclear, or under so much debate -- just like sugar, for example.
- bluedino 10y ago
  As someone who works at a company that is removing all vending machines at the first week of the year, I agree. It's none of their damn business what people eat or drink and taking vending machines out just reduces employee morale.
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    > none of their damn business what people eat or drink Well if they're buying the food and drink and providing it to their employees then it's literally part of their business operations.
    - gragas 10y ago
      It's not their duty to regulate the private dietary choices of every individual.
      - brianwawok 10y ago
        But they aren't. They are giving a bonus to people that make good choices. Seems good to me. Disclaimer: makes good choices and am health nut.
jimmyswimmy 10y ago
My company requires an annual health assessment be completed in order to avoid a higher insurance rate. There is no requirement that the data entered in the assessment be truthful. It seems like applying such a requirement would be difficult as all the data are self reported, therefore difficult to verify much of it. I have little objection to this approach. On the other hand the "livewell" points scheme seems annoying. I wonder whether employers consider the added cost. Most employees will complete such extra work-imposed requirements while at work instead of actually working. Suppose this costs four hours per month, that could easily work out to 5k/yr in most tech jobs. That's probably an underestimate. How does that compare to the reduced cost of insurance coverage?
- thesmallestcat 10y ago
  Whatever the circumstances, I'm blown away by your dedication and persistence in completing an Ironman triathlon every day.
- tdb7893 10y ago
  I think healthy employees have benefits besides just insurance benefits. Being healthy has a lot of benefits in general (less sick days and in my experience better focus and mood) and people should be taking some short breaks during the day regardless. I think of these programs actually affect employee health then they are worth a cost
  - jimmyswimmy 10y ago
    > I think of these programs actually affect employee health then they are worth a cost That may be so. But there are multiple costs: lost work due to completing these mandates, potential indignation over privacy concerns resulting in excess turnover, and other second order effects. My experience with the financial management teams at multiple companies leads me to believe that none of these, beyond the first order cost reduction ("ooh, lower insurance costs!") are being considered. It would not be that time consuming to complete an analysis of this. Depends strongly on your labour costs. But it should be considered. One could imagine this increasing the overhead of most large companies by a few percent, depending on how much the insurance reduction is.
pliny 10y ago
>If he chooses not to participate in the program, Abrams must pay an extra $50 per month toward his premium. Is he paying $50 more for not participating, or getting a $50 discount for participating? If it's the latter (Anthem insurance doesn't change their premiums, but now rewards people for using preventative medicine), then how could anyone object? It really is a win-win, and people who don't want to participate are no worse off. But, if Anthem Insurance aren't trying to motivate healthier behavior, but only trying to identify people who are already trying to become healthier (or stay healthy) and lower their premiums in order to remain more competitive, then it's the former. Workers are being penalized because P(Not trying to be healthy | Doesn't participate in the wellness program) is greater than P(Not trying to be healthy). What this actually means: The trying-to-be-healthy population are no longer subsidizing the not-trying-to-be-healthy population. I don't know if this is a bad outcome, I remember hearing an interview with Cathy O'Neil (the author) where she applies the same rhetoric and logic to loan approval and to criminal sentencing, in both cases she ignores the fact that going from the status quo (in this case, one where wellness programs exist) to her preferred reality (in this case, one where wellness programs do not exist) tends to take a lot of innocent people who are winners in the status quo (in this case, people who try to stay healthy, and enjoy lower premiums) and makes them into losers (since now they have to pay the same premiums as people who don't use preventative medicine). > Except, as it happens, this regimen already exists and it’s called humiliation and fat-shaming. Have someone tell you you’re overweight, or pay a major fine. I'm not overweight, so maybe I don't have the right perspective on this, but how terrible could "having a doctor tell you that you're overweight" be? Like, the only context I can understand this quote is that "Have someone tell you you're overweight" is some sort of grievous injury, and not just trivially inconvenient.
- breckenedge 10y ago
  Disclaimer: I am paid by my employer, a 3rd party provider of wellness programs, to write health incentives software. It's always phrased as the former, but employees that don't get the discount often see it as the later.
  - thesmallestcat 10y ago
ClearAsMud 10y ago
If that certainly _is_ true, that's a multi-million dollar chaching for the ADA and the ACLU. Also, if I was working for CVS I'd have my lawyer on that like flies on rice for a number of slippery slope reasons. That fires me up a ton, because if let's say the FitBit tracker they give you requires login, they might do the setup for you and slap it on your wrist. Well, that information contains monitoring and GPS coordinates and what is the policy around that? What is the retention of data? What is the sharing of data policy? I mean CVS case really raises an eyebrow for me. "The national drugstore chain CVS announced in 2013 that it would require employees to report their levels of body fat, blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol — or pay $600 a year."
byuu 10y ago
My employer/provider (Blue Cross) offered a $100 discount on insurance premiums in return for me taking a vial of my own blood and mailing it off to them for testing. Although I am in (mostly) good physical shape, I found it beyond creepy and refused to do it. But I worry about them increasing the discount in the future. It'll be harder to say no when it's $1000, or $2000. And let's be real: it's not a discount, it's a penalty for when you don't do what you're told. And given how my insurance doesn't even cover a 30-minute ER visit without sending me a bill in the mail for $1700, it's hardly even worth having insurance at all. At least at my age.
- DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  >>> And given how my insurance doesn't even cover a 30-minute ER visit without sending me a bill in the mail for $1700, it's hardly even worth having insurance at all. At least at my age. Until you show up uninsured at the same ER for the same visit and end up with a $10,000 bill because you don't have insurance. Whether it hits your deductible or not, insurance negotiates rates that are easily 75% cheaper than what you'd pay without it.
  - byuu 10y ago
    > Until you show up uninsured at the same ER for the same visit and end up with a $10,000 bill because you don't have insurance. That's the problem, though. If I can't afford it, then it doesn't matter whether they charge me $1,700 I don't have, or $1,700,000 I don't have. Either way, I'm not going to pay it, and it's going to end up going to collections and dinging my credit. Let's say the worst possible case happens and I get cancer. They don't treat you for that in the ER, other than the bare minimum to keep you alive. But to get those ungodly expensive $3,000 a dose drugs would require too much out of pocket. I wouldn't be able to get them with or without insurance.
    - ams6110 10y ago
      If you come in with a cash payment offer you can likely get the same discount. You do have to be willing to do a bit of negotiating however. Because nobody without insurance is actually paying those $10,000 bills.
vermontdevil 10y ago
My employer gives me and my wife $50 total monthly deduction from our insurance payment for not smoking. Of course if they find out you got sick from smoking, your coverage will be denied. My worry is what if they try to use this as a way to avoid covering catastrophically expensive illness where the underlying cause might be ambiguous and subject to interpretation.
petre 10y ago
They took a good idea (welness programs) and made a creepy dystopian thing out of it (biometric tracking for penalizing you on health insurance). That's what Weapons of Math Destruction is all about: tracking, data mining/collection, algorithms that discriminate people based on the data collected. This article is essentialy a advert for the book. I've read some of it in a library.
syntheticnature 10y ago
One of the big problem with Wellness programs is the same problem of measuring programmer productivity by tracking LOC -- it's a set of numbers that are only a proxy for the real thing. I look good on some numbers typically used and not so good on others, but I've only needed preventative maintenance for a while. Of course, what the insurance companies really care about is their cost, not your actual health, which is why the folks with the discounted plans wound up using the insurance more at a past employer -- strong encouragement to exercise more caused more exercise-induced injuries, particularly among a set of mountain bikers that became competitive once the company started logging their mileage as part of the "Wellness" program ... and they started logging broken bones!
zebraflask 10y ago
I think the sane approach is to provide voluntary incentives, without excessive tracking or "punishments" for not hitting arbitrary targets. My company has quite a variety of informal health-related perks and programs (gym discounts, on-site yoga, fun runs, etc.) which many people seem to enjoy using or participating in. There's no coercion, either overt or implicit, which I think is the key to success with these kinds of lifestyle issues.
- spectrum1234 10y ago
  This is voluntary.
  - zebraflask 10y ago
    I think I'm getting at removing the "or else" part of the scenario.
spectrum1234 10y ago
In the long run these corporate solutions are what is needed. Why? Because currently there is no financial incentive, in the short term, to stay healthy. Health insurance costs continue to increase and adverse selection continually makes this worse. The bias in this article is disturbing because currently even the government is doing nothing to incentive people financially in the short term in this same way. Think 50 years down the line - if systems like this aren't in place we are in serious trouble. There is no perfect solution but to blame companies for tying health and its costs to short term costs is insane. This is a GOOD THING. Wake up people! This reminds me of a quote (paraphrasing). "The market is the worst form of economic distribution, except for all others."
- vectorwhat 10y ago
  Im so healthy my doctor told me I need to drink more and consume more salt. I don't need HR knowing anything about my health. F them and F crypto-fascists who argue this is a good thing.
  - spectrum1234 10y ago
    You have a choice!!! Why are more short term incentives that are clearly lacking in the market a bad thing?!?!?!
    - vectorwhat 10y ago
      Because it MY data. It's voluntary now, but will it always be? You're a free market guy. What would you say about insurance companies deciding they'll only cover people who release all their data to them. Now I don't have a choice to release my data, do I? (since I'm forced to have insurance) How do I know what my doctor does with my electronic data? Legally, I have some assurances. Except we now know how much these legal assurances are in the electronic domain. This is soft paternalism. Freedom is being able to smoke a cigarette in your car with your 2 mo. old daughter in the back waving your middle finger at any holier-than-thou puritan who has a problem with it.
actuary 10y ago
If the article were instead devoted to exploring the application of similar programs in a different context, perhaps it would have been named "Drive Safe or Else: How Car Insurance Companies Became Obsessed with Tracking Your Speeding Tickets". There are clear benefits to charging insureds in proportion to risk, especially controllable risk. But of course these benefits need to be weighed against potential negative impacts. There's some discussion here about how to strike the right balance. It may be comforting to learn that actuaries, who design these risk classification programs, and regulators, who monitor and approve them, aren't just making this up as they go along. We're guided by principles, a basic summary of which [0] covers some of the topics discussed in this thread. Of course this only scratches the surface. [0] http://actuarialstandardsboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/riskclassificationSOP.pdf http://actuarialstandardsboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/0...
nradov 10y ago
Those interested in the legal basis for medical premium insurance discounts based on wellness programs should read Incentives for Nondiscriminatory Wellness Programs in Group Health Plans. It has all the details on what is and isn't legally allowed. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/06/03/2013-12916/incentives-for-nondiscriminatory-wellness-programs-in-group-health-plans https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/06/03/2013-12...
jmclnx 10y ago
how about going back to a real 40 hour work week so we have time keep in shape
- drewrv 10y ago
  Or we could decouple access to healthcare from employment.
pluma 10y ago
As a European: WTF. This is a perfect example of what is wrong with the US healthcare system and employment-based health insurance. The privacy headache of having the employer handle medical information alone would make this impossible (in Germany at least).

103 points by colinprince 10y ago

Companies need to control healthcare costs which are quite high in the US. Things like screening etc. theoretically should help by catching diseases earlier starting prevention earlier.

mamon 10y ago
The original sin here is that healthcare insurance is managed by a company instead of the government. That gives an employer too much power over their employees. In Europe healthcare costs are just another tax, which rate is set by goverment and your employer is just responsible for substracting that from your salary and transfering to government's bank account, but has no say about how much you should pay.The plus side is that your employer simply does not give a damn about your lifestyle choices.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  > The plus side is that your employer simply does not give a damn about your lifestyle choices. Employers still want you to be healthy because they don't want you taking days off work sick. In-service death benefits from heart attacks or whatever could be hundreds of thousands of euros and they still pay them even if you have a national health service. It's probably cheaper to pay for a gym than sick days and in-death benefits.
  - y_u_no_rust 10y ago
    Agreed, but I also think companies should look into a more tiered healthcare policy one blanket policy for everyone is silly lower wage earners should be on the cheaper plans.. the less they make the more replaceable they usually are anyway
  - mamon 10y ago
    You are partialy right, some employers will still care about your well being, but the point is that 1. Not all employers will care, and that fact alone gives you some choice. 2. Even employers that do care can only encourage you to live healty lifestyle but cannot punish you for not following their recomendations (financialy or otherwise)
- coredog64 10y ago
  Can we please not do this? There is no homogenized health insurance scheme across Europe. Switzerland has a different setup compared to Germany, which is different from France, which is different from the UK. If you want to speak intelligently on the subject, identify a country and compare and contrast with the US.
  - dumb-saint 10y ago
    They are the same for the purpose of the argument being made above.
- spectrum1234 10y ago
  No the original sin is healthcare is not respected as a market. In the US you can't get lower tier quality for a lower price. Literally every other industry has this. In Europe HC costs are going up as well so your argument is invalid.
- ams6110 10y ago
  You left out the third option: health insurance managed by the individual. Unfortunately has basically been eliminated as a choice by the ACA, as most of the affordable individual plans didn't qualify even if they were what the buyer wanted.

crazygringo 10y ago

> Those who don’t reach the targets in three categories have to pay an extra $1,000 a year toward their health insurance. It sounds a lot less sinister if you rephrase it: And those who reach targets in three categories get an extra $1,000 on their paycheck, that comes from the discount on their health insurance. This kind of data should not be known/tracked by your employer ever, for reasons of privacy. That's totally different from your health plan knowing, however. The deep question here, regarding all health insurance (including national schemes), is -- to what extent should you be expected to subsidize other people's intentionally unhealthy life choices? To what extent should people who make these unhealthy choices be forced to pay more for them? If I get diabetes because I drank 20 cokes a day... But it gets even harder, because who defines healthy? The long-term effects of so many activities is so unclear, or under so much debate -- just like sugar, for example.

bluedino 10y ago
As someone who works at a company that is removing all vending machines at the first week of the year, I agree. It's none of their damn business what people eat or drink and taking vending machines out just reduces employee morale.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  > none of their damn business what people eat or drink Well if they're buying the food and drink and providing it to their employees then it's literally part of their business operations.
  - gragas 10y ago
    It's not their duty to regulate the private dietary choices of every individual.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      But they aren't. They are giving a bonus to people that make good choices. Seems good to me. Disclaimer: makes good choices and am health nut.

jimmyswimmy 10y ago

My company requires an annual health assessment be completed in order to avoid a higher insurance rate. There is no requirement that the data entered in the assessment be truthful. It seems like applying such a requirement would be difficult as all the data are self reported, therefore difficult to verify much of it. I have little objection to this approach. On the other hand the "livewell" points scheme seems annoying. I wonder whether employers consider the added cost. Most employees will complete such extra work-imposed requirements while at work instead of actually working. Suppose this costs four hours per month, that could easily work out to 5k/yr in most tech jobs. That's probably an underestimate. How does that compare to the reduced cost of insurance coverage?

thesmallestcat 10y ago
Whatever the circumstances, I'm blown away by your dedication and persistence in completing an Ironman triathlon every day.
tdb7893 10y ago
I think healthy employees have benefits besides just insurance benefits. Being healthy has a lot of benefits in general (less sick days and in my experience better focus and mood) and people should be taking some short breaks during the day regardless. I think of these programs actually affect employee health then they are worth a cost
- jimmyswimmy 10y ago
  > I think of these programs actually affect employee health then they are worth a cost That may be so. But there are multiple costs: lost work due to completing these mandates, potential indignation over privacy concerns resulting in excess turnover, and other second order effects. My experience with the financial management teams at multiple companies leads me to believe that none of these, beyond the first order cost reduction ("ooh, lower insurance costs!") are being considered. It would not be that time consuming to complete an analysis of this. Depends strongly on your labour costs. But it should be considered. One could imagine this increasing the overhead of most large companies by a few percent, depending on how much the insurance reduction is.

pliny 10y ago

>If he chooses not to participate in the program, Abrams must pay an extra $50 per month toward his premium. Is he paying $50 more for not participating, or getting a $50 discount for participating? If it's the latter (Anthem insurance doesn't change their premiums, but now rewards people for using preventative medicine), then how could anyone object? It really is a win-win, and people who don't want to participate are no worse off. But, if Anthem Insurance aren't trying to motivate healthier behavior, but only trying to identify people who are already trying to become healthier (or stay healthy) and lower their premiums in order to remain more competitive, then it's the former. Workers are being penalized because P(Not trying to be healthy | Doesn't participate in the wellness program) is greater than P(Not trying to be healthy). What this actually means: The trying-to-be-healthy population are no longer subsidizing the not-trying-to-be-healthy population. I don't know if this is a bad outcome, I remember hearing an interview with Cathy O'Neil (the author) where she applies the same rhetoric and logic to loan approval and to criminal sentencing, in both cases she ignores the fact that going from the status quo (in this case, one where wellness programs exist) to her preferred reality (in this case, one where wellness programs do not exist) tends to take a lot of innocent people who are winners in the status quo (in this case, people who try to stay healthy, and enjoy lower premiums) and makes them into losers (since now they have to pay the same premiums as people who don't use preventative medicine). > Except, as it happens, this regimen already exists and it’s called humiliation and fat-shaming. Have someone tell you you’re overweight, or pay a major fine. I'm not overweight, so maybe I don't have the right perspective on this, but how terrible could "having a doctor tell you that you're overweight" be? Like, the only context I can understand this quote is that "Have someone tell you you're overweight" is some sort of grievous injury, and not just trivially inconvenient.

breckenedge 10y ago
Disclaimer: I am paid by my employer, a 3rd party provider of wellness programs, to write health incentives software. It's always phrased as the former, but employees that don't get the discount often see it as the later.
- thesmallestcat 10y ago

ClearAsMud 10y ago

If that certainly _is_ true, that's a multi-million dollar chaching for the ADA and the ACLU. Also, if I was working for CVS I'd have my lawyer on that like flies on rice for a number of slippery slope reasons. That fires me up a ton, because if let's say the FitBit tracker they give you requires login, they might do the setup for you and slap it on your wrist. Well, that information contains monitoring and GPS coordinates and what is the policy around that? What is the retention of data? What is the sharing of data policy? I mean CVS case really raises an eyebrow for me. "The national drugstore chain CVS announced in 2013 that it would require employees to report their levels of body fat, blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol — or pay $600 a year."

byuu 10y ago

My employer/provider (Blue Cross) offered a $100 discount on insurance premiums in return for me taking a vial of my own blood and mailing it off to them for testing. Although I am in (mostly) good physical shape, I found it beyond creepy and refused to do it. But I worry about them increasing the discount in the future. It'll be harder to say no when it's $1000, or $2000. And let's be real: it's not a discount, it's a penalty for when you don't do what you're told. And given how my insurance doesn't even cover a 30-minute ER visit without sending me a bill in the mail for $1700, it's hardly even worth having insurance at all. At least at my age.

DoodleBuggy 10y ago
>>> And given how my insurance doesn't even cover a 30-minute ER visit without sending me a bill in the mail for $1700, it's hardly even worth having insurance at all. At least at my age. Until you show up uninsured at the same ER for the same visit and end up with a $10,000 bill because you don't have insurance. Whether it hits your deductible or not, insurance negotiates rates that are easily 75% cheaper than what you'd pay without it.
- byuu 10y ago
  > Until you show up uninsured at the same ER for the same visit and end up with a $10,000 bill because you don't have insurance. That's the problem, though. If I can't afford it, then it doesn't matter whether they charge me $1,700 I don't have, or $1,700,000 I don't have. Either way, I'm not going to pay it, and it's going to end up going to collections and dinging my credit. Let's say the worst possible case happens and I get cancer. They don't treat you for that in the ER, other than the bare minimum to keep you alive. But to get those ungodly expensive $3,000 a dose drugs would require too much out of pocket. I wouldn't be able to get them with or without insurance.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    If you come in with a cash payment offer you can likely get the same discount. You do have to be willing to do a bit of negotiating however. Because nobody without insurance is actually paying those $10,000 bills.

vermontdevil 10y ago

My employer gives me and my wife $50 total monthly deduction from our insurance payment for not smoking. Of course if they find out you got sick from smoking, your coverage will be denied. My worry is what if they try to use this as a way to avoid covering catastrophically expensive illness where the underlying cause might be ambiguous and subject to interpretation.

petre 10y ago

They took a good idea (welness programs) and made a creepy dystopian thing out of it (biometric tracking for penalizing you on health insurance). That's what Weapons of Math Destruction is all about: tracking, data mining/collection, algorithms that discriminate people based on the data collected. This article is essentialy a advert for the book. I've read some of it in a library.

syntheticnature 10y ago

One of the big problem with Wellness programs is the same problem of measuring programmer productivity by tracking LOC -- it's a set of numbers that are only a proxy for the real thing. I look good on some numbers typically used and not so good on others, but I've only needed preventative maintenance for a while. Of course, what the insurance companies really care about is their cost, not your actual health, which is why the folks with the discounted plans wound up using the insurance more at a past employer -- strong encouragement to exercise more caused more exercise-induced injuries, particularly among a set of mountain bikers that became competitive once the company started logging their mileage as part of the "Wellness" program ... and they started logging broken bones!

zebraflask 10y ago

I think the sane approach is to provide voluntary incentives, without excessive tracking or "punishments" for not hitting arbitrary targets. My company has quite a variety of informal health-related perks and programs (gym discounts, on-site yoga, fun runs, etc.) which many people seem to enjoy using or participating in. There's no coercion, either overt or implicit, which I think is the key to success with these kinds of lifestyle issues.

spectrum1234 10y ago
This is voluntary.
- zebraflask 10y ago
  I think I'm getting at removing the "or else" part of the scenario.

spectrum1234 10y ago

In the long run these corporate solutions are what is needed. Why? Because currently there is no financial incentive, in the short term, to stay healthy. Health insurance costs continue to increase and adverse selection continually makes this worse. The bias in this article is disturbing because currently even the government is doing nothing to incentive people financially in the short term in this same way. Think 50 years down the line - if systems like this aren't in place we are in serious trouble. There is no perfect solution but to blame companies for tying health and its costs to short term costs is insane. This is a GOOD THING. Wake up people! This reminds me of a quote (paraphrasing). "The market is the worst form of economic distribution, except for all others."

vectorwhat 10y ago
Im so healthy my doctor told me I need to drink more and consume more salt. I don't need HR knowing anything about my health. F them and F crypto-fascists who argue this is a good thing.
- spectrum1234 10y ago
  You have a choice!!! Why are more short term incentives that are clearly lacking in the market a bad thing?!?!?!
  - vectorwhat 10y ago
    Because it MY data. It's voluntary now, but will it always be? You're a free market guy. What would you say about insurance companies deciding they'll only cover people who release all their data to them. Now I don't have a choice to release my data, do I? (since I'm forced to have insurance) How do I know what my doctor does with my electronic data? Legally, I have some assurances. Except we now know how much these legal assurances are in the electronic domain. This is soft paternalism. Freedom is being able to smoke a cigarette in your car with your 2 mo. old daughter in the back waving your middle finger at any holier-than-thou puritan who has a problem with it.

actuary 10y ago

If the article were instead devoted to exploring the application of similar programs in a different context, perhaps it would have been named "Drive Safe or Else: How Car Insurance Companies Became Obsessed with Tracking Your Speeding Tickets". There are clear benefits to charging insureds in proportion to risk, especially controllable risk. But of course these benefits need to be weighed against potential negative impacts. There's some discussion here about how to strike the right balance. It may be comforting to learn that actuaries, who design these risk classification programs, and regulators, who monitor and approve them, aren't just making this up as they go along. We're guided by principles, a basic summary of which [0] covers some of the topics discussed in this thread. Of course this only scratches the surface. [0] http://actuarialstandardsboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/riskclassificationSOP.pdf http://actuarialstandardsboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/0...

nradov 10y ago

Those interested in the legal basis for medical premium insurance discounts based on wellness programs should read Incentives for Nondiscriminatory Wellness Programs in Group Health Plans. It has all the details on what is and isn't legally allowed. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/06/03/2013-12916/incentives-for-nondiscriminatory-wellness-programs-in-group-health-plans https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/06/03/2013-12...

jmclnx 10y ago

how about going back to a real 40 hour work week so we have time keep in shape

drewrv 10y ago
Or we could decouple access to healthcare from employment.

pluma 10y ago

As a European: WTF. This is a perfect example of what is wrong with the US healthcare system and employment-based health insurance. The privacy headache of having the employer handle medical information alone would make this impossible (in Germany at least).