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

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

#51

Post by tyingq »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #22
snarf21 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it seems likely sex would trigger data similar to most workouts Marketers would have a field day with that data.

>it seems likely sex would trigger data similar to most workouts

Accelerometers and GPS would allow them to narrow down specific types and patterns of sex as well. Lots of sex in cheap motels == high risk. Correlating customers together..this one has HIV, and appears to be having sex with this customer == high risk. Fun.

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

#52

Post by tyingq »

Sleeep wrote: post #45
matrixtransform wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could cheat by giving the watch to someone else to do a workout for you?

I imagine someone working out with like 6 fitness trackers attached to them.

Strap one to your largish dog with a heart rate close to human range.

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

#53

Post by chimeracoder »

laydn wrote: post #47
chimeracoder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This should quickly be declared illegal, if not already. Dropping coverage like that is illegal already. > If they ... increase premiums based on this, they are no longer an "insurance company". I don't know what we would call them. Quite the contrary - an insurance company, by definition, is expected to price insured entities based on the expected future payouts (ie, the levels of risk). More specifically, the sum…

Shouldn't that read: "" More specifically, the sum of all expected future premiums that all patients pay should be slightly more than the sum of all expected future claims for all patients "" You can not reduce the calculations to a single patient. If an insurer finds out that you will develop a certain type of cancer for which median treatment cost is 1M USD and lifetime support costs will be 30K USD/year, they shou…

> Shouldn't that read: "" More specifically, the sum of all expected future premiums that all patients pay should be slightly more than the sum of all expected future claims for all patients ""

No, it shouldn't. I mean, the thing you wrote is a true statement too, because of the distributive property of summation, but the point is that insurance does work on a per-plan level. If any individual's expected future premiums are less than their expected future payouts, then it's not insurance.

There's a common misconception that insurance is about pooling risk between patients, which is not really the case - it's true at an accounting level, but only as a secondary effect. The fundamental purpose of insurance is to smooth risk across states of the world, which is a completely different thing.

Pretend for the moment that spontaneous combustion of humans exists, can be predicted with some understood probability model, and is an insurable event. In that case, "spontaneous combustion insurance" is not about smoothing risk between Alice and Bob - it's about smoothing risk between universe A (in which Bob spontaneously combusts tomorrow) and universe B (in which Bob does spontaneously combust).

Spontaneous combustion is an easy example to use illustratively because it's a binary event, terminal (you can only combust once), and intuitively independent (by definition of spontaneity, Bob's combustion does not impact Alice's chances of combustion). This is a simplified version of the general insurance model, however, which is capable of handling non-binary events, non-terminal events, and interdependent events. In all of those cases, the risk smoothing happens between states-of-the-world, not between individuals.

> If an insurer finds out that you will develop a certain type of cancer for which median treatment cost is 1M USD and lifetime support costs will be 30K USD/year, they should not be allowed to increase your premium accordingly.

That's a value judgement that you're free to make, but at that point, we're no longer talking about insurance in anything but name.

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

#54

Post by snewk »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #42

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 w…

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.

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

#55

Post by chimeracoder »

notfromhere wrote: post #49
chimeracoder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This should quickly be declared illegal, if not already. Dropping coverage like that is illegal already. > If they ... increase premiums based on this, they are no longer an "insurance company". I don't know what we would call them. Quite the contrary - an insurance company, by definition, is expected to price insured entities based on the expected future payouts (ie, the levels of risk). More specifically, the sum…

That's not insurance, you're basically describing a health savings account. Insurance spreads the cost of all payouts by all patients as to spread out the risk amongst every patient. Not every patient will be profitable. The goal is to have enough healthy, profitable patients to balance out the sick individuals.

> Not every patient will be profitable.

No, but no individual plan is ever expected to lose money. If that's the case, you're talking about something that isn't actually insurance.

You're illustrating the original point: when people talk about "health insurance", they're already talking about something that fundamentally is not insurance. If health insurance were insurance in anything but name, then increasing premiums based on expected future risk would be exactly how we would expect health insurance companies to behave.

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

#56

Post by frubar »

jeron wrote: post #7
zimpenfish wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

What I would be afraid of, here, is that if there are signs that big data can uncover that peel out some catastrophic disease from your workout data that would mean your insurance company knows you're very ill long before you do... It would extremely tempting not to do something about that knowledge that helps the company even if it hurts a soon-to-be-dead-anyway person.

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

#57

Post by LaGrange »

tgb wrote: post #21
LaGrange wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

I do not live in the US. Those reimbursement is what sounds really weird.

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

#58

Post by specialist »

m_mueller wrote: post #36
tomaskafka wrote: post #34

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 infe…

.. 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 mak…

"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.

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

#59

Post by m_mueller »

specialist wrote: post #58
m_mueller wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. 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 mak…

"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…

Have you looked at the BAT project? Seems to me that something along these lines could bring such a vision closer.

As in, your browser blocks tracking / identification by default (integrated TOR?). Sites can offer you a bit of tokens if you agree to share your identity / if you let them track what you're looking at. It's a bit of an extension of what BAT aims for, but I think their vision goes in such a direction.

I could see such a thing taking hold, just like AdBlock Plus and co. have become a thing that advertisers / publishers need to work around.

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

#60

Post by specialist »

m_mueller wrote: post #59
specialist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Have you looked at the BAT project? Seems to me that something along these lines could bring such a vision closer. As in, your browser blocks tracking / identification by default (integrated TOR?). Sites can offer you a bit of tokens if you agree to share your identity / if you let them track what you're looking at. It's a bit of an extension of what BAT aims for, but I think their vision goes in such a direction. I…

Do you mean Basic Attention Token? https://basicattentiontoken.org

Looks interesting. Thank you.

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