> But patient advocates are skeptical health insurers have altruistic designs on people’s personal information. It's funny that the article felt this needed to

> But patient advocates are skeptical health insurers have altruistic designs on people’s personal information. It's funny that the article felt this needed to be said. Just how would an altruistic insurance company have survived in such a competitive market? I think I learned the insurance business model early in life. I lived near a horse race track, and used to collect the programs and assemble giant (paper) spreadsheets with various data on horses and their win/loss records. Does the jockey make a big difference? Does the wetness of the track? I would have used any measure that gave me an edge in betting, with zero "altruistic" regard for the horse, its owners, or anyone else but me. You know, like an insurance company. It turned out that there was a datum that significantly improved my odds, and converted me from a regular loser to an irregular net winner. And it didn't come from a program. I figured out that I could just watch the horses as they paraded to the starting gate, pick the one that I thought looked like it wanted to win, and could, and ran to place a bet on it before the race started. Far from perfect obviously, and I didn't win big, but I started winning more than losing. I'd bet that insurance companies wish they could do something similar: Have experienced medical underwriters examine and interview potential customers and then make gut level decisions, then judge more by underwriter stats than patient stats. But that approach seems to be increasingly prohibited, so they make do with what data they can get. It's hard to find that surprising, unless somehow you've confused "insurance" and "altruism" to be related terms.