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These days it just seems crazy to trust some random SV company that's likely to be acquired by a huge company with questionable privacy ethics in a couple years

by CPLX 8y ago

These days it just seems crazy to trust some random SV company that's likely to be acquired by a huge company with questionable privacy ethics in a couple years with sensitive data that traditionally has been used to price discriminate in health insurance. I went to their website looking for some acknowledgement that they take this problem seriously and didn't see it. Even worse, the article says that they envision a future collaborating with employers to track employee programs. There's just no way I would be able to feel comfortable sharing this kind of information with a company that has this business model.

adanto6840 8y ago
The question is found on all health insurance applications as far as I'm aware -- "Have you used tobacco in the past 6 months". I'm under the impression that the question is not optional and that it's perfectly legal for insurers to price discriminate based on the answer to it (understandably and justifiably so IMO). I'm not sure, but I'd also assume that being dishonest when answering the question would technically put you at risk of having claims denied on that basis -- or, at the very least, having your rates raised retroactively since it presumably would indicate that you belong in a higher risk (and premium) pool... Is my layman's understanding wrong?
- wolco 8y ago
  The fact that these companies can discriminate based protected human attributes like age or gender doesn't make sense in this day and age.
  - ciupicri 8y ago
    The fact that you assume that age and gender don't make a difference in this age of big data, doesn't make sense.
    - wolco 8y ago
      So does race do we include that? So do other factors like politics. Should we say if you are black you should pay more? A trump fan gets to pay less until he leaves office. We create groups based on anything to assign costs to other people. Everyone should be paying the same general rate with personal factors like accident history, or tickets.
      - cortexio 8y ago
        race: yes, politics: yes, black: no, trump: no

by CPLX 8y ago

adanto6840 8y ago

The question is found on all health insurance applications as far as I'm aware -- "Have you used tobacco in the past 6 months". I'm under the impression that the question is not optional and that it's perfectly legal for insurers to price discriminate based on the answer to it (understandably and justifiably so IMO). I'm not sure, but I'd also assume that being dishonest when answering the question would technically put you at risk of having claims denied on that basis -- or, at the very least, having your rates raised retroactively since it presumably would indicate that you belong in a higher risk (and premium) pool... Is my layman's understanding wrong?

wolco 8y ago
The fact that these companies can discriminate based protected human attributes like age or gender doesn't make sense in this day and age.
- ciupicri 8y ago
  The fact that you assume that age and gender don't make a difference in this age of big data, doesn't make sense.
  - wolco 8y ago
    So does race do we include that? So do other factors like politics. Should we say if you are black you should pay more? A trump fan gets to pay less until he leaves office. We create groups based on anything to assign costs to other people. Everyone should be paying the same general rate with personal factors like accident history, or tickets.
    - cortexio 8y ago
      race: yes, politics: yes, black: no, trump: no