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Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

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Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#161

Post by intrasight »

avhon1 wrote: post #117
intrasight wrote: post #111

These program will all be illegal at the end of the year anyway, so don't invest much in hacks.

Do you have a source on that? Also, what country?

Best thing is to google "ada aarp eeoc gina" for timeframe of last few months. An example

https://www.provanthealth.com/industry-trends/2018/3/26/what...

"In the fall of 2016, the AARP brought suit on behalf of its members, arguing that the ADA and GINA regulations are inconsistent with Congress’s statutory requirement that employers’ wellness programs be “voluntary.” The AARP argued its members were injured by being forced to pay higher health insurance costs to avoid disclosing personal health information. In the fall of 2017, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted summary judgment to the AARP, holding that, although the term “voluntary” was ambiguous in the ADA’s and GINA’s statutes, the EEOC’s interpretation of the term was not supported by a reasoned explanation and therefore was not entitled to the Court’s deference."

http://www.psfinc.com/articles/aarp-vs-eeoc-lawsuit-update-s...

"If the current court order stands, wellness programs may not be allowed to tie incentives to wellness programs subject to the ADA or GINA."

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#162

Post by djrogers »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #69
tzs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did the Delhi residents themselves think about cobras? Were the natives OK with cobras running around and it was just the British that wanted to reduce the population? I'm curious because if everybody disliked wild cobras loose in the city I'd have expected the breeders to kill their stock when the bounty ended, not free it.

Why? Killing them requires, well, doing something. You have to actually kill them, which takes effort, and then you have to dispose of the carcasses, which takes effort. On the other hand, simply turning them loose is no effort at all.

If you own a machete (or rampiri, or kukri), the marginal cost (and frankly effort) of killing a cobra is basically zero. And disposing of the dead ones has to be as easy or easier than disposing of live ones if you factor in any factors related to other people...

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#163

Post by 8_hours_ago »

lev99 wrote: post #142
8_hours_ago wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting... I am in my 20s and bike ~20 miles per day. Over the last 5 years I have had 3 broken bones due to bike accidents including one which required an ambulance ride. With few exceptions, I only go to the doctor for bike-related injuries and my annual physical. To my health insurance provider, do the benefits to my cardiovascular system and general fitness offset the cost to treat my injuries? I am g…

3 incidents per year at 20miles/day is higher than the statistical average. Are you biking in a way to increase the likelihood of an incident, biking in an area that is less safe than the average bike ride, or did you just have an unlucky year?

That is 3 incidents over 5 years. I don’t think that is too much of a statistical anomaly. One of the injuries was from a pedestrian stepping into the bike lane without looking, one was from a car merging into me, and one was from a collision with another cyclist while racing.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#164

Post by greglindahl »

wpietri wrote: post #135
forgueam wrote: post #28

I did something similar in college. A company paid cash for installing software that displayed ads on the bottom of your monitor. It qualified your ad viewing activity based on mouse movement. At night I would open the software, wrap my mouse cord around an oscillating desk fan, then go to bed. Earned myself $50/month

To my combined horror and joy, you can now just buy a commercial mouse jiggler: https://www.amazon.com/WiebeTech-Programmable-Mouse-Jiggler-...

There's a legit use for those, to avoid screen blanking. Also used to keep computers from locking themselves after N minutes of inactivity.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#165

Post by Dylan16807 »

tempestn wrote: post #157
wpietri wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the latter part, but I think the first part is pretty clearly true. The theoretical economic value of advertising is new product discovery. If you needed a thing but didn't know there was a solution and you saw an ad, then some of the value you gain would be attributable to the ad. Imagine a world entirely without ads. Would you really be lacking a lot? I doubt it. Especially with the internet, it'…

Advertising can be very helpful to get a new product or service in front of people, which then allows you to start building word of mouth referrals etc. Without it, there are many things that would never see the light of day. And because it costs money, it provides somewhat of a filter; while we all feel inundated with a lot of garbage advertising, you'd have to wade through far more to find interesting new products…

How many products do you know where most of their ads were an initial announcement to the world, vs. how many are throwing up ads constantly just to fight back the flood of other ads?

And requiring money is often bad too. Many very good products just don't profit enough to afford mountains of marketing.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#166

Post by allenz »

geofft wrote: post #126
Splines wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are willing to go quite far sometimes: https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/8fu7wi/albertan_cha...

This feels like an abstracted form of arbitrage: the markets have figured out that there's a quantifiable risk difference between men and women, but they have not distinguished cis and trans folks in their model, and not figured out whether this is a hormones-at-birth difference, or a current-hormones difference, or a socialization difference, or what. They have also certainly not figured out how to distinguish actua…

> Once they figure it out, they'll price this person as a person, and he won't be able to swing it as dramatically.

Ronald Coase, of Coase theorem fame, believed that markets are rarely efficient: "Coase argued that real-world transaction costs are rarely low enough to allow for efficient bargaining and hence the theorem is almost always inapplicable to economic reality."[1] In this case, the inefficiency persists because the costs of implementing a more detailed model would far exceed the benefits.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#167

Post by lostlogin »

greglindahl wrote: post #164
wpietri wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my combined horror and joy, you can now just buy a commercial mouse jiggler: https://www.amazon.com/WiebeTech-Programmable-Mouse-Jiggler-...

There's a legit use for those, to avoid screen blanking. Also used to keep computers from locking themselves after N minutes of inactivity.

If only there was another way.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#168

Post by lostlogin »

Steltek wrote: post #12

I bike 15+ miles a day but my work's discount program doesn't "support" biking. If I was into vigilante justice, I'd consider a solution like this too. But as it is, I'm quite content biking for my own sake rather than some pittance of a benefit.

Some sort incentivised exercise was offered at our local school. The winner was putting the fit bit on a kid each breakntime and getting excellent result. Strapping then on young children gets good numbers fast.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#169

Post by Dylan16807 »

eli wrote: post #131
dragonwriter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true to the extent that the chosen measure was only coincidentally something that looked like a good measure to start with; if you were actually measuring the true feature of merit, making it a target wouldn't make it a bad measure. Making a measure a target incentivizes discovery of its deficiencies, if any, as a measure.

What's an example of a metric that measures the true merit of something?

No metric is perfect, but if you were measuring fat percentage in a moderately-accurate way it would be a very solid basis for an incentive.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#170

Post by Caprinicus »

daviross wrote: post #143
moscovium wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so glad these incentives have contributed to expediting the eventual heat death of our universe

To be fair, you posting this comment also contributed to expediting the eventual heat death of the universe, so.

Fortunately he has fit bits on all 10 fingers so it wasn’t a waste
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