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Heart Monitors In Middle School Gym Class?
An anonymous reader writes "My son brought home an order form from his middle school. Apparently the 7th (his grade) and 8th graders are being asked (required?) to purchase their own straps for the heart monitors they're to wear during gym class. I know nothing yet of the device in question, but have left a voice-mail with the assistant principal asking him to call me so I may ask some questions about the program and the device. My tinfoil-hat concern is that the heart rate data will be tied to each child, then archived and eventually used for/against them down the road when applying for insurance, high-stress jobs, etc. 'I see you had arrhythmia during 7th grade pickle ball? No insurance for you' Has anyone heard of such a program, or had their child(ren) take part in it? Does the device transmit to the laptop the overweight gym teacher will be watching instead of running laps with the kids? Perhaps data is downloaded from the device after the class? Or am I just being paranoid? Thanks for any insight."
Clearly the school is afraid of being sued when some kid keels over from too much exertion.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
You had a good reason to consult the principal, if you don't get assurances in writing I wouldn't suggest that you allow the device to be used on your child.
Bruce Perens.
I sure as hell hope that Obama and the congress/senate outlaws denying insurance based on preexisting conditions. It seems like such an obvious abuse of the uneven patient - insurer relationship and an area sorely in need of regulation.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
OK, stories like this reveal a fascinating contradiction.
The original question expressed concern that a child's heart rate and other health info would be used to either deny them health insurance or force them into a higher risk pool.
But the libertarian presumption is that free markets with full information work better for everyone involved. The insurers want information that will enable them to remove expensive-to-insure people from coverage where possible, or at least to put them in a much more expensive pool. While they want perfect information (to make insuring people as low-risk and profitable as possible,) clearly the parents of kids who may have pre-existing conditions do not want that information available. Wouldn't the libertarian approach be to allow insurers to take every possible measure to get that information out into the open, so that they can tier insurance appropriately? Doesn't that mean that people who are loath to share their information are probably "free-riding" on lower-risk populations? Wouldn't that make the refusal of information (such as heart rates, etc.) a reasonable basis for refusing insurance, or at least charging a higher premium for it?
What the hell was wrong with stainless steel slides? Those things were AWESOME. Never had one at my school but there was one at my local park and I loved it.
And fuck the waivers. What the hell has this country come to when we need people to sign waivers to RUN?
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I'm an EMT. I've seen that exact thing happen, to a 9 year old kid in a YMCA. It should have been found beforehand, but wasn't. Once his heart stopped, it couldn't be restarted (and this kid had just about the best shot possible).
Heart monitors aren't the right answer. It's fucking complicated to interpret an EKG, computers can do a rudimentary piece of that - but the point of physical activity is that muscles are firing, so heart monitoring is absolutely useless.
That's a complete non-sequiter.
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