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John Hancock will include fitness tracking in all life insurance policies
- gnicholas 8y agoI knew that you could get a free Apple Watch Series 3 if you hit certain targets. I emailed to find out if they were going to have the same offers for Series 4, but have not gotten confirmation one way or the other. I just got an email saying "we couldn't find you in our customer database, so we can't help you". I'd love to be one of their customers, if I can get a Series 4 out of it. Not just to have the watch, but also the incentive to stay active. EDIT: this is my most downvoted comment ever, and I have no idea why. I assumed others reading this article might also wonder if their programs apply to the new Apple Watches. Apparently I was wrong?
- privacypoller 8y agoor you could use the incentive of, you know, a longer more enjoyable life...
- on_and_off 8y agoI have not downvoted you but I am guessing that most people find the idea of giving up so much of your personal data in exchange for a shiny pebble silly at best.
- gnicholas 8y agoI figured this might be part of it, and appreciate your confirmation. I'm certainly not saying others should do this, but for me it's a good concrete incentive. The immediacy of the financial benefit is more psychologically motivating than the long-term benefit of a longer life, at least for me.
- jeffbax 8y agoTo me insurance companies offering discounts for those who use trackers and exercise regularly is a good market solution to the out of control healthcare costs. We should be glad this is an option for people.
- Simulacra 8y agoNo. In fact, Hell no. I’m not wearing a fitness tracker so my life insurance company can keep tabs on me. That is utterly ridiculous. Give me a physical and charge me more if you have to, but none of this big brother stuff
- tejaswiy 8y agoIf enough people subscribe to the idea, this might become the standard operating procedure and you won't even have the option of saying no.
- sandworm101 8y agoThose of us in free countries, those with proper national health care, sure will.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- blang 8y agoThis is for life insurance, which is a very different product than health insurance. Health insurance is something that pays for things continuously while you are alive to keep you alive and healthy. Live insurance pays your beneficiaries (usually people that depend on your salary) when you die.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoThe same countries, like the UK, where most motor insurers are well on the way to requiring in-car black boxes? Even the AA and RAC, that once could have been relied on to take a stance against such a thing, now offer telematics insurance.
- Jach 8y agoFortunately such a tracking mechanism ought to be trivial to automate. People went to some pretty fun lengths just for Pokemon Go, when there's financial incentive and prizes involved...
- njarboe 8y agoGod might be dead, but it sure feels like we will soon be back to where people believe they are being monitored at all times.
- drharby 8y agoI already do and actively practice counterintelligence methods for my e presence
- iratewizard 8y agoI am a senior software engineer with John Hancock. I can say with quite a bit of certainty that the Orwellian conspiracy is just paranoia. I can't tell you how many boring but necessary meetings I've sat through around what data we can cache on user's devices and ensuring we don't collect more geolocation data than necessary. It's not just the project I'm on. It's a company attitude that it can't afford the problems that arise from bad data collection policies. My gut says this is sensational journalism.
- AequitasOmnibus 8y agoThis is a simply ridiculous response. Geolocation is the least intrusive data that is being discussed here. By far the bigger offense is tracking an individual's health to ensure that the employee is sufficiently "healthy." John Hancock may not be monitoring my location (although every mobile device already is) but by its own admission, it will be monitoring my activity levels, computing the number of steps I take (or whatever other health metric it plans to use e.g. heart rate) and applying some formula to penalize employees who are "underperforming" on their health "goals." Insurance is already an enormously intrusive industry and fitness tracking crosses the threshold of unacceptable conduct.
- iratewizard 8y agoThe number of steps you take is more intrusive than where you've been? I'm supposed to believe John Hancock is going to bring about the boring dystopia you describe because you claim insurance is enormously intrusive? Was your first sentence a warning about the rest of your response?
- bcoates 8y agoEither venturbeat changed the title to be more accurate or uploader editorialized "include" to "require"
- champagnepapi 8y agoI believe they updated the title.
- sctb 8y agoThanks! So did we.
- Sujan 8y agoActual title says "John Hancock will include fitness tracking in all life insurance policies", not "... require ...".
- champagnepapi 8y agoI believe they updated the title.
- imglorp 8y agoIt sounds like a voluntary discount at the moment--including some manual data entry--but after they make it tighter and more mandatory, I predict a new industry: gaming exercise programs. At first, in order to spoof daily steps, maybe you can just throw the tracker into a clothes dryer or rock tumbler, or maybe inside your hubcap. If they want to see heartrate also, then I predict a device that you place against the tracker's IR sensor and blinks IR back at it, simulating a heartbeat. This would cost a few dollars in parts. The next step of course is to simply spoof the tracker and upload directly to the company's internal API.
- njarboe 8y agoPay your dog walker to wear it all day.
- ihattendorf 8y agoThen when it comes time to pay any benefits, the company finds out and denies the claim.
- njarboe 8y agoCorrect. Cheating on multi-million dollar term life policies is a bad idea. The company has high incentive to find a way not to pay. A 25k policy from your employer, not so much.
- JeanMarcS 8y agoWell as all insurance companies do, when it comes for them to repay you (or in this case those you asked to be paid when you die), if the amount is big they’ll try to verify that you haven’t cheated. That’s where it will be hard for your loved ones to find out that they’ll finally get nothing. This big brother stuff is outrageous by the way.
- robertely 8y agoIt seems that we are way ahead of you: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/24/fitness-tracker-cheating-is-bi.html https://boingboing.net/2018/07/24/fitness-tracker-cheating-i...
- gnicholas 8y agoJH offers two types of plans, Vitality Go and Vitality Plus. The latter offer these incentives, but apparently (I just spoke with a JH rep) cost $2 more per month. This changes the math a bit, and makes it clear that the "free" incentives aren't actually free. You're just paying for them in a different way (especially if you don't hit the activity targets). Maybe you come out a little ahead if you hit all the targets, but not as far ahead as you think.
- cushychicken 8y agoI'm sure a partnership with Apple is soon to follow, given the latest Watch's capacity to be certified as a medical device.
- pmlnr 8y agoGenuinely idiotic idea - from someone who does martial arts and can't wear fitness trackers during sport.
- navs 8y agoNot even chest strap ones? I'm not suggesting you should, just curious as someone who's picked up Muay Thai and can't wear wrist ones with my gloves.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoOne of my first thoughts on this was that there are many ways of being healthy - many that do no fare well with such a tracker.
- MiddleEndian 8y agoSame, I also just find them uncomfortable. When I run stairs I hold my phone in my left hand to track my time and laps, and my wallet in my right hand just for symmetry. I don't like strapping things to myself nor having one thing on the left but not right (and vice versa).
- mreome 8y agoThis isn't a new idea, Virgin Pulse has been providing a service just like this for companies to integrate into their health-insurance and benefit plans for years. https://www.virginpulse.com/use-case/reduce-healthcare-costs/ https://www.virginpulse.com/use-case/reduce-healthcare-costs...
- bogomipz 8y ago>"In theory, everybody wins, as policyholders are incentivized to adopt healthy habits and insurance companies collect more premiums and pay less in claims if customers live longer." If someone is not incentivized to adopt healthier habits due to the benefits of actually being healthier or feeling better are they really going to by a "incentivized" by their life insurance premiums? It's also laughable to think one could ever be "winning" when they have agreed to wear a corporate tracking device.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dogma1138 8y agoA few insurance providers in the U.K. give out Apple whatches and gym memberships that need to be used for a “discount” the discount is them essentially not charging you the cost of these “gifts” not sure if they are collecting any data or not.
- drivingmenuts 8y agoAn alternative solution is to buy enough of a policy or have a savings account to just cover funeral expenses and drop the life insurance extra payouts. Bet John Hancock would hate that solution. I mean, once you've covered your expenses, everything else is just luxury and hubris.
- safgasCVS 8y agoThe purpose of the Vitality program has almost nothing to do with the advertised improvements in health but act as a 'land grab' of healthy lives from other insurers. Its almost entirely to do with selection despite what they may advertise. Established insurers that dont start their own incentive program to keep these healthy lives are in for a very rough time as Vitality will spread like a cancer.