
John Hancock will include fitness tracking in all life insurance policies - champagnepapi
https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/19/john-hancock-will-require-fitness-tracking-for-all-life-insurance-policies/
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safgasCVS
The 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.

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drivingmenuts
An 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.

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dogma1138
A 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.

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Simulacra
No. 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

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tejaswiy
If enough people subscribe to the idea, this might become the standard
operating procedure and you won't even have the option of saying no.

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sandworm101
Those of us in free countries, those with proper national health care, sure
will.

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NeedMoreTea
The 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.

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imglorp
It 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.

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robertely
It seems that we are way ahead of you:
[https://boingboing.net/2018/07/24/fitness-tracker-
cheating-i...](https://boingboing.net/2018/07/24/fitness-tracker-cheating-is-
bi.html)

~~~
ezoe
As Chinese says, 上有政策下有对策(If the Upper class has policies, Lower class has
mitigations)

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GW150914
That’s fantastic! I think that’s my new favorite next to 天高皇帝远 “Heaven is high
and the emperor is far away.”

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pmlnr
Genuinely idiotic idea - from someone who does martial arts and can't wear
fitness trackers during sport.

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Broken_Hippo
One 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.

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bogomipz
>"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.

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njarboe
God might be dead, but it sure feels like we will soon be back to where people
believe they are being monitored at all times.

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iratewizard
I 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.

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AequitasOmnibus
This 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.

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iratewizard
The 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?

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calgoo
And developers who refuse to see other people's points are the exact reason we
get these issues. That does not mean that you are wrong or that the people
here are wrong.

Just because its not intrusive at the moment, it does not eliminate the
slippery slope that it can cause. Because if we mandate fitness trackers
today, tomorrow they might be used to monitor you during the workday, for
"stress reasons". This is one of the main reasons why at least i dont like
this.

Another reason i personally dont like this, is that it allows the insurance
company to build an even bigger profile on me, and my data. Then sooner or
later, that data will get sold off, stolen, or just gifted away. Also, how do
we know other apps on your phone wont start stealing the info? Maybe Facebook
will add it to their increasing list of info it collects, or google will add
is as part of usability improvements or some other bs excuse.

edit: spelling

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gnicholas
JH 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.

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mreome
This 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/)

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Sujan
Actual title says "John Hancock will include fitness tracking in all life
insurance policies", not "... require ...".

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champagnepapi
I believe they updated the title.

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cushychicken
I'm sure a partnership with Apple is soon to follow, given the latest Watch's
capacity to be certified as a medical device.

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bcoates
Either venturbeat changed the title to be more accurate or uploader
editorialized "include" to "require"

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champagnepapi
I believe they updated the title.

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sctb
Thanks! So did we.

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gnicholas
I 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?

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on_and_off
I 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.

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gnicholas
I 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.

