8 ms·

Apple in talks with Aetna to bring Apple Watch to millions of customers

65 points by brandonb 9y ago

trapperkeeper74 9y ago
The secret Apple project for potentially blood glucose monitoring would be amazing. Non-interstitial fluid / noninvasive sounds like a really hard problem that may require a very bright light source and/or a sensor more sensitive than used for heart rate. It's a worthy goal. Even more awesome would be a limited generic mass-spectrometer that could do more, arbitrary blood chemistry quantification in software without having to develop many/additional specialized sensors.
Tanegashima 9y ago
I hate this, right now, you can’t do anything out of free will. I’m not insured with them, but if I am, can I go to the gym, and enjoy it, or will I be always subconsciously thinking “I’m doing this to save insurance money”. I’m saddened to see Apple go that way to sell Apple Watches, I would expect this from many companies, none of them being Apple. BTW, loving my Series 0 since the first day they came out.
pawadu 9y ago
"Aetna now reportedly has ambitions to offer it to a wider field — adding large swaths of new health data to pull from and giving the health insurance company insight into the activities of its customers." Oh God no!
- joejerryronnie 9y ago
  Right?!! The beginning of the end - so long, and thanks for all the fish!
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  It'll be opt-in and this isn't a new thing - there's several UK insurers that'll give you discounts and bonuses for life insurance if you log workouts with their apps. This just makes it easier for both sides.
  - jeron 9y ago
    honestly I'd support a program where the more you work out the lower your insurance premiums would be. Pretty hard to cheat workouts with Apple Watch when it has a heart rate sensor and all that.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      Vitality (in the UK) link with a whole range of things - Health, Fitbit, Garmin, Polar, Moves, Nokia, etc. Although you get rewards from them (Starbucks drinks, cinema tickets, etc.) rather than straight discounts on your insurance.
      - saiya-jin 9y ago
        exercise often to get some Starbucks drinks... hilarious
    - snarf21 9y ago
      It isn't a horrible idea in the abstract but it seems likely sex would trigger data similar to most workouts. Also, there are people who eat healthy but don't have time for the gym. Conversely people who go to the gym everyday but mostly to try to burn up their Big Mac combo meal. From an insurance standpoint, I think HA1C is the only measure we could like use. Things like BMI, etc. are too varied based on genetics.
      - Maakuth 9y ago
        You generally get what you measure, so be careful to measure what you want to get. Isn't elevated heart rate connected to better health outcomes no matter what physical activity it comes from? Why should the insurance company care if some of it is sex instead of, say, running?
      - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
        it seems likely sex would trigger data similar to most workouts Marketers would have a field day with that data.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  But why not. If you're sitting up all night drinking energy drinks and smoking cigarettes while Uber drops off more McDonalds while I'm out running, working out, stretching regularly... Why should I subsidise your insurance?
  - vijayr 9y ago
    Isn't that how insurance works though? There are always going to be people who don't take care of themselves. Instead of trying to shame them like this, why not increase awareness? Why not reduce subsidies on corn, meat and instead (or at least in addition to) subsidize vegetables and fruits?
  - LaGrange 9y ago
    If I'm sitting at home, avoiding skin cancer and excessive wear & tear, while you're running around ruining your joints and breathing car exhaust... ...why should I subsidise _your_ insurance? (really, America is so weird. Even in our rather terrible non-single-payer insurance system it would be illegal to base premiums on lifestyle. Insurance cost is decided by law, you may buy some extras, the end).
    - tgb 9y ago
      I don't think your parenthetical remark is at all correct: I've received insurance reimbursements for going to the gym X number of times in the US.
      - LaGrange 9y ago
        I do not live in the US. Those reimbursement is what sounds really weird.
  - mosselman 9y ago
    Next thing you know you will pay higher premiums when you decide to have children with someone of whom some algorithm says is a poor match with your genes. Why should I subsidise your "inferior" child?
  - 9y ago
- Shivetya 9y ago
  I am against it not for privacy reasons but instead because it is an expensive option for what it offers. there are many lower cost options that can perform the monitoring they claim. People get mad at the cost of insurance, well here is one major reason why. This would almost be as bad as when the local police forces and post offices near us got Segways. that and when schools were bamboozled into buying iPads for all students. Apple is padding their bottom line, nothing more. Aetna is going along because it must make some higher ups feel good by association.
  - sverige 9y ago
    For a while, the story was that watches were going to take over the world. Now, the story is that the overstock has to be got rid of somehow.
    - melling 9y ago
      Apple Watch sales are up 50% https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/apple-watch-sales-up-over-50-since-last-year/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/apple-watch-sales-up-over-... I’d say they are simply trying to grow their market.
      - pawadu 9y ago
        Yet Apple is #3 after Xiaomi and fitbit, with more Asian companies closing in. I think Apple needs this deal more than they admit.
        zimpenfish 9y ago
        Presumably that's #3 in "market share" or "units sold" (assuming both Xiaomi and Fitbit accurately report the latter) and not "profit"?
        brlewis 9y ago
        Units shipped: https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/apple-falls-third-place-q2-2017-wearable-band-market-smartwatches-receive-boost-second-half https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/apple-falls-third-place-q2-... I don't think Apple reports units shipped. Fitbit does. I don't know about Xiaomi. The numbers are a mix of reported units and estimated units.
tomaskafka 9y ago
Let's not forget that what's even more profitable than 'pricing insurance according to actual activity' (which is a nicely sounding PR cover up) is 'dropping people with early symptoms of a disease before it gets found by their doctor'. Which is unethical, but legal (right?) and extremely, extremely profitable. Keep all premiums, drop people with cancer before they find out about it. And yes, if it's possible to infer pregnancy from shopping bills, then inferring a early health problem from a detailed 24/7 tracker data will be much easier. And if you want to opt out of this? 'Here are our rates without a fitness tracker discount, they cost 5 times more, ok?'
- m_mueller 9y ago
  .. which is why a government guaranteed insurance with good overall coverage is necessary. severe market defects in health care furthermore make dictated prices for services/prescriptions necessary. Adjusting Obamacare for that you end up with the Swiss system - still expensive bur at least effective and IMO fair. Thinking about it, increasing information asymmetry due to machine learning applied to marketing may make heavy regulations necessary in most other sectors as well. Imagine software that tracks every person and figures out what they need when, identifies a monopoly of opportunity for any given good and them jacks up the price just for that person individually - in real time, while the person walks up to it. Maybe that's how capitalism ends. Slavery 2.0.
  - specialist 9y ago
    "Imagine software that tracks every person and figures out what they need when..." aka the status quo. People are profiting from my data. I want my cut. Screw privacy. I want my cut. Any one storing or using my data for any reason owes me money. Sell my address to a direct mail campaign. I want my cut. Need my health history for some longitudinal study that may ultimately save lives. Awesome. Pay me. Use my purchase history to recommend a new pair of shoes or sell ads. Woot! Pay me. Micro target my snowflake demographic for targeted political agitprop (aka campaigning). That's worth at least $50. Pay me.
    - 9y ago
JohnTHaller 9y ago
If Aetna wanted to offer customers discounts on insurance for healthy activity, it would make far more sense to do it with something like a Fitbit. A purpose-built device for tracking activity and heartrate. The Apple watch doesn't do as good a job as the fitbit at fitness tracking, is bigger and heavier, is far more expensive, and gets far worse battery life. Not to mention the fact that the Apple Watch only works with iPhones meaning that it would be useless for the majority of US smartphone users whereas the Fitbit works with both iPhone (as much as Apple lets them) and Android. Side Note: I switched from an Android watch to a Fitbit for activity and sleep tracking for many of the reasons outlined above.
- snewk 9y ago
  my speculation is that these talks are specifically in regard to tracking some biometric that the current line of apple watches doesn’t yet have sensors for.
kaffeemitsahne 9y ago
It would be pretty good business as a very healthy person to walk around with your arms full of other people's trackers.

65 points by brandonb 9y ago

The secret Apple project for potentially blood glucose monitoring would be amazing. Non-interstitial fluid / noninvasive sounds like a really hard problem that may require a very bright light source and/or a sensor more sensitive than used for heart rate. It's a worthy goal. Even more awesome would be a limited generic mass-spectrometer that could do more, arbitrary blood chemistry quantification in software without having to develop many/additional specialized sensors.

Tanegashima 9y ago

I hate this, right now, you can’t do anything out of free will. I’m not insured with them, but if I am, can I go to the gym, and enjoy it, or will I be always subconsciously thinking “I’m doing this to save insurance money”. I’m saddened to see Apple go that way to sell Apple Watches, I would expect this from many companies, none of them being Apple. BTW, loving my Series 0 since the first day they came out.

pawadu 9y ago

"Aetna now reportedly has ambitions to offer it to a wider field — adding large swaths of new health data to pull from and giving the health insurance company insight into the activities of its customers." Oh God no!

joejerryronnie 9y ago
Right?!! The beginning of the end - so long, and thanks for all the fish!
zimpenfish 9y ago
It'll be opt-in and this isn't a new thing - there's several UK insurers that'll give you discounts and bonuses for life insurance if you log workouts with their apps. This just makes it easier for both sides.
- jeron 9y ago
  honestly I'd support a program where the more you work out the lower your insurance premiums would be. Pretty hard to cheat workouts with Apple Watch when it has a heart rate sensor and all that.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    Vitality (in the UK) link with a whole range of things - Health, Fitbit, Garmin, Polar, Moves, Nokia, etc. Although you get rewards from them (Starbucks drinks, cinema tickets, etc.) rather than straight discounts on your insurance.
    - saiya-jin 9y ago
      exercise often to get some Starbucks drinks... hilarious
  - snarf21 9y ago
    It isn't a horrible idea in the abstract but it seems likely sex would trigger data similar to most workouts. Also, there are people who eat healthy but don't have time for the gym. Conversely people who go to the gym everyday but mostly to try to burn up their Big Mac combo meal. From an insurance standpoint, I think HA1C is the only measure we could like use. Things like BMI, etc. are too varied based on genetics.
    - Maakuth 9y ago
      You generally get what you measure, so be careful to measure what you want to get. Isn't elevated heart rate connected to better health outcomes no matter what physical activity it comes from? Why should the insurance company care if some of it is sex instead of, say, running?
    - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      it seems likely sex would trigger data similar to most workouts Marketers would have a field day with that data.
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
But why not. If you're sitting up all night drinking energy drinks and smoking cigarettes while Uber drops off more McDonalds while I'm out running, working out, stretching regularly... Why should I subsidise your insurance?
- vijayr 9y ago
  Isn't that how insurance works though? There are always going to be people who don't take care of themselves. Instead of trying to shame them like this, why not increase awareness? Why not reduce subsidies on corn, meat and instead (or at least in addition to) subsidize vegetables and fruits?
- LaGrange 9y ago
  If I'm sitting at home, avoiding skin cancer and excessive wear & tear, while you're running around ruining your joints and breathing car exhaust... ...why should I subsidise _your_ insurance? (really, America is so weird. Even in our rather terrible non-single-payer insurance system it would be illegal to base premiums on lifestyle. Insurance cost is decided by law, you may buy some extras, the end).
  - tgb 9y ago
    I don't think your parenthetical remark is at all correct: I've received insurance reimbursements for going to the gym X number of times in the US.
    - LaGrange 9y ago
      I do not live in the US. Those reimbursement is what sounds really weird.
- mosselman 9y ago
  Next thing you know you will pay higher premiums when you decide to have children with someone of whom some algorithm says is a poor match with your genes. Why should I subsidise your "inferior" child?
- 9y ago
Shivetya 9y ago
I am against it not for privacy reasons but instead because it is an expensive option for what it offers. there are many lower cost options that can perform the monitoring they claim. People get mad at the cost of insurance, well here is one major reason why. This would almost be as bad as when the local police forces and post offices near us got Segways. that and when schools were bamboozled into buying iPads for all students. Apple is padding their bottom line, nothing more. Aetna is going along because it must make some higher ups feel good by association.
- sverige 9y ago
  For a while, the story was that watches were going to take over the world. Now, the story is that the overstock has to be got rid of somehow.
  - melling 9y ago
    Apple Watch sales are up 50% https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/apple-watch-sales-up-over-50-since-last-year/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/apple-watch-sales-up-over-... I’d say they are simply trying to grow their market.
    - pawadu 9y ago
      Yet Apple is #3 after Xiaomi and fitbit, with more Asian companies closing in. I think Apple needs this deal more than they admit.
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        Presumably that's #3 in "market share" or "units sold" (assuming both Xiaomi and Fitbit accurately report the latter) and not "profit"?
        brlewis 9y ago
        Units shipped: https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/apple-falls-third-place-q2-2017-wearable-band-market-smartwatches-receive-boost-second-half https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/apple-falls-third-place-q2-... I don't think Apple reports units shipped. Fitbit does. I don't know about Xiaomi. The numbers are a mix of reported units and estimated units.

tomaskafka 9y ago

Let's not forget that what's even more profitable than 'pricing insurance according to actual activity' (which is a nicely sounding PR cover up) is 'dropping people with early symptoms of a disease before it gets found by their doctor'. Which is unethical, but legal (right?) and extremely, extremely profitable. Keep all premiums, drop people with cancer before they find out about it. And yes, if it's possible to infer pregnancy from shopping bills, then inferring a early health problem from a detailed 24/7 tracker data will be much easier. And if you want to opt out of this? 'Here are our rates without a fitness tracker discount, they cost 5 times more, ok?'

m_mueller 9y ago
.. which is why a government guaranteed insurance with good overall coverage is necessary. severe market defects in health care furthermore make dictated prices for services/prescriptions necessary. Adjusting Obamacare for that you end up with the Swiss system - still expensive bur at least effective and IMO fair. Thinking about it, increasing information asymmetry due to machine learning applied to marketing may make heavy regulations necessary in most other sectors as well. Imagine software that tracks every person and figures out what they need when, identifies a monopoly of opportunity for any given good and them jacks up the price just for that person individually - in real time, while the person walks up to it. Maybe that's how capitalism ends. Slavery 2.0.
- specialist 9y ago
  "Imagine software that tracks every person and figures out what they need when..." aka the status quo. People are profiting from my data. I want my cut. Screw privacy. I want my cut. Any one storing or using my data for any reason owes me money. Sell my address to a direct mail campaign. I want my cut. Need my health history for some longitudinal study that may ultimately save lives. Awesome. Pay me. Use my purchase history to recommend a new pair of shoes or sell ads. Woot! Pay me. Micro target my snowflake demographic for targeted political agitprop (aka campaigning). That's worth at least $50. Pay me.
  - 9y ago

JohnTHaller 9y ago

If Aetna wanted to offer customers discounts on insurance for healthy activity, it would make far more sense to do it with something like a Fitbit. A purpose-built device for tracking activity and heartrate. The Apple watch doesn't do as good a job as the fitbit at fitness tracking, is bigger and heavier, is far more expensive, and gets far worse battery life. Not to mention the fact that the Apple Watch only works with iPhones meaning that it would be useless for the majority of US smartphone users whereas the Fitbit works with both iPhone (as much as Apple lets them) and Android. Side Note: I switched from an Android watch to a Fitbit for activity and sleep tracking for many of the reasons outlined above.

snewk 9y ago
my speculation is that these talks are specifically in regard to tracking some biometric that the current line of apple watches doesn’t yet have sensors for.

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago

It would be pretty good business as a very healthy person to walk around with your arms full of other people's trackers.