But then they would be telling you something you already know and agree with. I just saved you the time. Anyway, not trying to be argumentative, I'm just trying to sort this out. Have a good day...and I do mean that!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Watch Owners With UnitedHealthcare Can Earn Awards for Being Active
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'm in the UHC Motion program which I prefer to what this one has for qualifications. This is a daily thing and gets you $1 for each one you do. So if you do them every day the potential is over $1000/yr. I started about 3 years ago and try to do these everyday. I love being paid for doing something I should be doing anyway (getting exercise and moving around).
Frequency: 6x short walks of at last 300 steps, at least an hour apart
Intensity: 3000 steps in 30 minutes
Tenacity: 10,000 steps total on the day
Frequency: 6x short walks of at last 300 steps, at least an hour apart
Intensity: 3000 steps in 30 minutes
Tenacity: 10,000 steps total on the day
It does work that way for health insurance as to age. Other factors are no longer permitted to be considered. This is because health care is essential to, you know, staying alive. Driving is not.
All I know is which insurers I have to sue all the time. United used to be the clear winner. More recently it has been BCBS.
Then why am I paying the same premium as someone who is at least 150 lbs overweight, diabetic, high blood pressure, etc. and 11 years older than me? Both males, by the way. We've compared what we pay each month. As you can see, it actually doesn't work that way.
Exactly! I've been saying the same thing for years now, and few are listening because "Ooh! Free stuff, and discounted rates!"
My workplace started one of these programs during COVID and they expected you to go get a "biometric screening" as the first requirement to participate. Then, they had all of these various little "challenges" to earn points, and you'd achieve something like a $500 discount on your annual healthcare payment if you hit a required point total. (One of the Finance guys quietly pointed out, over a water-cooler discussion, that the whole thing was rigged so the ONLY thing that would get you enough points to get the discount was getting your COVID vaccine.)
Since then, they've kept the program going with all "new challenges and prizes" -- but it always involves doing things that give the insurer ability to data-mine aspects of your health and fitness habits.
That’s literally exactly how insurance works. There's a pool of people with varying risk of [whatever they're insuring against] happening, and on balance the insurer pulls in enough money from everyone to pay for the claims. Great that you work out and have a clean bill of health. As you age, however, you will find yourself making more claims against your health insurance. At that point, those claims you make will be subsidized by the younger and healthier people in the pool.
And if you find this all horribly unfair because you're so healthy and all these sickos are taking advantage of you, maybe just remove yourself from the pool of insured people and put those insurance premiums into a savings account or something.
Last edited:
My response wasn't a hypothetical. Come back when you're not just playing "what if".
What do you think they are mining when you go to the physician for any routine checkup, let alone if you do have any major ailment, which may or may not require a hospital visit? You aren't worried about your data when that happens...
You can't have it both ways; either be worried about your data, or worried about your health in this situation. If your data means more, drop your insurance.
BL.
Last edited:
Yes, I find it unfair that I have to pay the same premium as someone who is morbidly obese and does not work out, and I have to pay higher insurance premiums almost every year because almost half of the people in America are morbidly obese and do not workout. I shouldn't have to subsidize people's health insurance who choose to live their lives in an unhealthy manner. And if health insurance was like car insurance, morbidly obese people that don't workout would be paying much higher premiums than they do now. They would basically be paying SR22 rates. That is not the case though.
Last edited:
The issue here is that you assume that they are living their lives in an unhealthy manner. Prime example:
My wife had a diaphragmatic hernia when she was born. While they were able to fix that, normal procedure when children are born is to sterilize their eyes, normally with something like silver nitrate. The doctor in this case ordered a cautery stick of silver nitrate to be applied to my wife's eyes. The student under him questioned it, which she was abruptly told to not question him. She applied the stick to her eyes, which fried her cornea and retina in one eye, and severely damaged the optic nerve from that eye leading back to her brain. glaucoma set in on the other eye, leaving my wife nearly totally blind.
Long story short, malpractice suit follows, followed by 7 cornea transplants, which one barely took, leaving her with very little eyesight at all in the eye that didn't have glaucoma. And despite all of that, she went into power lifting, made Team USA, and set a world record for powerlifting in her weight class at that time, at 16 years old.
Yet 6 years ago, she suffered the first of 4 submassive pulmonary embolisms that caused her breathing capability to be sharply reduced, requiring a lot more sleep, as well as because of that reduced ability to breathe, she can not exercise because she doesn't have the lung capacity to do as such anymore.
Submassive: Picture a blood clot the size of a grapefruit trying to pass through the pulmonary artery to your lung.
Because of that, and based on how she looks, you've already judged her to be morbidly obese and does not work out. You should seriously consider finding out more about a person instead of swiftly judging them based off of what you think is happening in their lives.
Oh, and by your logic, since you would be subsidizing people's health, she should have to live with being permanently blind, by malpractice, with no way of being able to fix her blindness, through no fault of her own.
You seriously do not want to go down this path.
BL.
Last edited:
Clearly you don't understand the point I am trying to make here. Again, you are talking about one-offs (like another forum member), not the vast majority of the people we are discussing. The bottom line is, if you are morbidly obese and do not workout, you are generally (meaning 9 times out of 10) not as healthy as someone who is within their ideal weight range that does work out, period. This only gets worse with age. Outside of this, congrats on your wife's accomplishments and I'm sorry that happened to her.
Last edited:
State rules on healthcare. Exactly why UnitedHealthcare is not allowed to offer this program in all 50 states. Some states have signaled they are looking at changing their rules.
You don't understand the point I am trying to make here. One will not know the true condition of each individual person they are being prejudicial on (and yes, it is prejudice) because that condition is only between that person and their physician. No one here is in any authority to judge that, not should base their actions on such prejudices. You may want to check that.
BL.
I'm not judging anyone's condition. When did I ever say that I judge anyone? I never did. There are people out there who are morbidly obese, lazy, and choose not to workout. 90+% of those people are not considered healthy by the medical community, regardless of their age. Find one doctor that encourages that type of lifestyle and you've found yourself a complete quack. Again, you don't get it. Anyway, I've labored on this point long enough. Have a good one!
Last edited:
Could not think less of United Healthcare. I went through so much pain trying to get some medical expenses covered. Nothing like this poor fellow. I would never give them this kind of data.
Apples and oranges comparisons here, IMO.
When you actually HAVE a medical problem? Sure, the insurance company finds out about it, since they probably had to PAY on the claim.
I'm worried about my health AND my personal data, and think there's got to be some sort of balance struck. Insurance companies would obviously LOVE to collect every last bit of data about you that they could. Imagine if your homeowners' insurance could send someone through your home at random, any time they wished, to take photos and video and notes on how you lived your daily life? "Noted the wife likes to light candles in the bathroom and has a radio plugged in, in the same room water is being run."
Realistically? We have an expectation that insurance is there to cover our claims as we put them in, while charging a reasonable rate that takes some basics into account but doesn't probe into every little detail.
Omg ya’ll need tin foil hats! WTH is wrong with people that they think any data sharing is immediately bad? PLEASE EXPLAIN how the heck UHC knowing how many steps you took is going to lead to a terrifying precedent. I honestly can’t believe there are so many paranoid people in this world. WOW! Ya’ll better stay off google, don’t shop online (or else Amazon will know what you like to buy) and just live in a tent in the woods and you’ll be perfectly safe!
Please pass the tinfoil hat. Once you've gone through the pain of dealing with insurance companies for things they don't want to cover it puts things in a new perspective for you.
And as for an example of why there's concern: https://www.propublica.org/article/...tails-about-you-and-it-could-raise-your-rates