Slashdot Mirror
Here Comes the Panopticon: Insurance Companies
New submitter jbmartin6 writes: The Panopticon may be coming, but perhaps not how we think. Instead of a massive government surveillance program, we might end up subjected to ubiquitous monitoring to save on our insurance premiums. The "internet of things (you can't get away from)" makes this more and more possible. Here a company saved money on its health insurance premiums by distributing Fitbits and an online service to enable reporting fitness gains back to the insurance company. We've already seen the stories on using black boxes to monitor drivers. There is even an insurance company named Panoptic! Heck, why not a premium hike for owners of this or that "aggressiveness gene"? What if in the future we got a quick "+50 cents" tweet for every scoop of ice cream? I suppose the natural stopping point might be the balance between an individual's willingness to be monitored and the desire to reduce insurance premiums.
"The internet of things (you can't get away from)"
What kind of trollish shit is this?
It's OK if corporations do it in order to increase profits, because that's not communism.
roman_frosty_mir
Save on premiums?!? What, that cuts into Insurance Corporations Profits! Much more likely it'll be to deny people coverage despite having paid for the insurance.
Progressive's been offering Snapshot, an OBD-II dongle you plug in and allow to monitor your driving. They get the data periodically and can give you discounts for safe driving.
Bet they can also up your rates for "normal" driving too!
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Under ObamaCare you are still subsidizing the people who don't take care of themselves...You really think those without FitBits will be charged extra??
It's OK when the government actually does this, but it's BAD when slashdot pretends the private sector is doing it.
In case you missed the memo.
One can draw an analogy between this and supermarket club cards, where you *can* buy groceries without one, but, it is 25% more expensive.
In this future, you can buy insurance without pervasive monitoring, but, it'll cost you extra.
Insurance companies shaping coverage/billing based on client data? Shocked, I say....
Can you say red-lining?
without always using cliches like "panopticon". We'll take you more seriously, we'll assume you can think for yourself rather than just parroting something someone else said, and we might even read the article you linked to. Thanks.
When we make soceity beholden to us, be become beholden to society. You can call it an unintended consequence, but no one with a brain can say it was an unforeseen consequence.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Think you'd be able to "opt out" of this after government takes over health care?
And how do you think access to health care is going to be controlled?
By government bureaucrats: "I'm sorry, you've eaten too much and you're diabetes is your own damn fault. No 'free' health care for you!"
Yep, the same people who want to outlaw Big Gulps will be running health care.
This has nothing to do with lowering insurance premiums and everything to do with Not increasing them, there is a difference. I highly doubt that the companies are willing to make less money because they have more data. They will either make the same amount or More. I hate corporate "Spin" and feel like this is just propaganda to help ease us into giving them more to charge us more.
This reminds me of buffet vs. a la carte expenses, just applied to insurance. If eating ice cream were to cost $0.50 extra each time (or I were to "save" 50 cents when I didn't eat ice cream), I might be more conscious about that cost and decide to not eat any than if that cost were figured in and distributed among all users buffet-style.
This may result in a healthier population, I would imagine. But given percentage profit caps due to the ACA (at least in the US), I suspect that profits would go down as a result. So, the plan backfires.
Combined with the negativity associated with charging a "tax" on eating tasty food, I doubt this really goes anywhere.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Nobody wants to pay for claims arising from behavior riskier than their own.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
#1 - Remove all tech that isn't relevant to processing claims.
#2 - Get rid of the supposed doctors and pharmacists that try to second-guess real doctors and pharmacists that actually know the patients and their conditions.
#3 - Quit trying to rape your customers by raising your rates every 30 seconds so some executive can buy their next mega-yacht.
#4 - Forget about the stockholders - hunker down, focus on serving your customers ethically and responsibly.
#5 - Quit wasting money trying to buy congress-kritters to get unethical laws passed.
The rest will follow
Heck, why not a premium hike for owners of this or that "aggressiveness gene"? What if in the future we got a quick "+50 cents" tweet for every scoop of ice cream?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
When did /. become a blog for the obsessively paranoid and a forum for wild speculations? 'News' for nerds indeed...
...ever put in that car insurance fob into your auto's computer port? (e.g. Progressive's Snapshot, where they treat it as a cute little device that aggressively records everything your car is doing when you drive.) People (not corporations, *individuals*) go out of their way to use these stupid things, not fully realizing (or caring) that they're willingly allowing an insurance company to monitor everything they do.
But you know, it's okay because they get a discount and it's not the government doing it (*eyeroll*).
In all seriousness, if you want to whore yourself out for "discounts", I'd normally say that's your problem, not mine - but then I realize that the rest of us will get dinged for NOT opting-in, so damnit, stop that you idiots!
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
by distributing FitBits to employees.
Did they also provide FitBit winders?
But then how are the poor executives supposed to get their mega-yachts? Won't somebody think of the executives!
...is that instead of "saving" you on premiums, it will only be used as an excuse to tack on more to your premiums.
We already see this with credit ratings. Having trouble paying your bills, even though you pay your car insurance on time? Here's a nice 20% price hike to punish you.
This is the way this always works, particularly with an industry that you are legally mandated to do business with.
But the fitbit stuff, I could see occurring - 10% reduction if you wear one 24/day and qualify. Not that different from what we do with cars today. Most importantly, unlike the DNA stuff, a fitbit monitor would theoretically encourage better behavior, which makes political sense, while dna mapping has tons of political issues.
The real problem we are having is not the loss of privacy per se, it's the abuse of private information. Most people are fine letting Onstar know their current location. We are not fine with Onstar telling anyone that information - not the police, not our wife, not our boss.
What we really need are a bunch of punitive laws that punish people/corporations for 'accidental' release of information. It doesn't have to be severe, but monetary compensation seems reasonable. They make X dollars selling the stuff, so we should have the right to get Y if they sell it or give it away without our permission (and Y should be far in excess of X).
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Why not simply outlaw insurance companies attempting to cheat? Because this is basically what insurance companies are trying to do -- make a big play at getting something for nothing off their subscribers.
Or when it comes to moral hazard, is there just one set of rules for us little people, and another for the corporations?
With enough data these companies can compile a "Safety Score", kind of like how a few companies know everything about your financial life and give you a credit score.
Why wouldn't an apartment or condo community want to check your safety score? A lot of them do background checks and credit checks now, I can definitely imagine people wanting to live in communities where everyone has a safety score above some number. And I can imagine communities for the rejects. The more data companies compile on you the more they can begin to stratify their goods and services. If they do it right and it benefits more people than it hurts then it will work.
But everyone wants to pay the rates of the healthiest, safest, best maintained because if you have to pay more than that you must be getting ripped off.
Most people can't understand statistics or probabilities that extend past a single coin flip. Hedges, short and long positions, defensive financial tactics are way beyond your typical American who can barely balance a checkbook. Understanding that insurance is a combination of both - not gonna happen. The only dichotomy that people "understand" about insurance is that it is an evil expense due every month that gives them nothing in return, and a magical pixie horse that pays you money if something bad happens to you.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
#2 - Get rid of the supposed bureaucrats, doctors and pharmacists that try to second-guess real doctors and pharmacists that actually know the patients and their conditions.
#6 - The government should stop forcing people to buy coverage they don't want.
#7 - Patients who never had insurance before, but get it when they get "sick", need to pay a 10x premium and 10x deductible until they've paid the equivelent of 10 years of premiums.
This is so that the rest of us who have carried insurance "just in case" don't have our premiums raised because some dumbshit figured they'd live forever and always be healthy so spent their premium dollars on something else they wanted.
insurance companies are taking a page from social media and hedging their bets that you will concede to them monitoring your every waking movement. In most cases you arent told what exact amount you stand to save on insurance until after the metric is collected, and its usually very little (between 5-15%) You arent even told what metrics that little box is collecting or how theyre used, or how long theyre maintained. Most of the information they keep with these snooping devices becomes proprietary once you sign up. So why are you so ill informed about this?
its largely because insurance companies are using the metrics to forecast profit and loss to their board and shareholders, not because they actually care about saving you money. In some cases signing up for a biometric program might quietly absolve the insurance company from having to treat you for a whole range of different ailments they attribute to a sedentary lifestyle, thus saving them in quarterly losses. The worst part is nobody is asking questions like 'does this fitbit factor into my HIPAA protection?' or 'can this vehicle data be used against me in a court of law?'
full disclosure: im signing up for a workplace fitbit program subsidized by my employer. The data, presumably, is going to be aggregated from the devices and submitted to the health insurance company as "harmless biometrics" but as I cant sign up for my employers healthcare for another 7 months, I have no intention of using the device outside of the data i scrape from it in linux using fitbitd.
Good people go to bed earlier.
You can save $$$ on low mileage car insurance if you agree to be monitored by Metromile.
Free Million Dollar Idea: Sell an OBD-II simulator that shows what nice, pleasant driver you are. Plug their dongle into that.
Better yet, get yourself an NHS, and give everyone a basic health plan funded out of general revenue.
The usual corporate pigs will scream blue murder, but everyone will forget it once they realize the absolutely massive efficiency gains to be made, by having the system waste vast resources handling private insurance overhead instead of healing people.
The NHS over here is a gigantic, expensive command economy (and one of the biggest employers in the world), and it isn't quite up to Mayo Clinic standards, but it is absolutely, vastly more efficient than the colossal fuckup that is the US private health system. And it's abolished medical expenses as a cause of bankruptcy.
Not a few times, I've heard the phrase "thank God for the NHS". Americans will eventually understand the truth, and get one too.
They track you using your credit card. The cards are because people want them these days. Albertsons finally knuckled under and started offering them. Not because they needed them for tracking, like I said they already did that, but because customers whined they weren't getting a "good deal". So they raised their prices, and introduced a card.
if you vote GOP they will use this to blacklist people who they thing will get sick and then they will only have the ER.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
maybe the good thing out of that is the end of employer based health-care
"the internet of things" is a pretext for a panopticon
sure "one" could do that, but "one" wouldn't benefit with any new understanding, **because that's a stupid comparison**
i can "draw an analogy" to pissing in a jar, that doesn't mean anything
you're giving everyone a free pass, and assuming the best of intentions on their part....when if you were using your analytical brain, you'd see that the past has taught us to assume the opposite: companies will be as bad as "Big Brother" if we let them
governement and business **both** need accountability
Thank you Dave Raggett
you are trolling, Charliemopps and I'm calling you out
YES....gp is right, "the internet of things" is indeed a pretext for a capitalist "Big Brother" and it fits exactly into "libertarian" (read: Republican) ideals
NO...you are wrong, "the internet of things" and fitbits for insurance premium discounts **is not in any way** connected to what anarchists want...anarchists, true to their name, are united only in opposition to a system...
YES...you are a troll...yes libertarians and Republicans are two sides of a totalitarian coin
Thank you Dave Raggett
you're giving "libertarians" way too much credit
the people calling themselves "libertarians" now in US politics are usually undereducated, poor/working class, underemployed, and about abstract 'ideals' rather than actual policy
they're dupes...pawns for the aristocracy that controls the GOP
Thank you Dave Raggett
No one will save a dime, regardless of how onerous or time-consuming or intrusive the "savings method" may be.
What will happen is that people who do this will pay the baseline average they pay now (perhaps more, hey, you've got all this "high tech" process stuff from your insurance company now, right?), and those who don't play along will pay more than they do now.
There is never, ever an incentive for an insurance company to actually reduce your bill. There is an incentive for them to do things that let them model their risk better (that is, model you) so they can increase their net profits. That's all there is. That's all there ever is. That is capitalism.
Why is this surprising is not clear. It's pretty clear that whatever happens, the last part got to be
Profit!
Anything goes when there is money to be made.
I suppose the natural stopping point might be the balance between an individual's willingness to be monitored and the desire to reduce insurance premiums.
Possibly, although the cynic in me says that the natural stopping point will be when the insurance companies require that you be monitored or they will not provide you with insurance.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Insurance only works because of uncertainty. The very concept of getting people to buy insurance depends on aggregating risk over a sufficiently large population.
When the insurance companies can actually offer people rates that come within a small margin of actual payouts (plus a hefty bit extra for the insurance company's cut) - Why would any sane person still pay for insurance? Put the same money in the bank and cut out the middle-man.
Is it monitoring? Yes. Are the devices "on the internet," that is, IP routable? No.
Enough with this IOT bullshit.
I guess it's not sexy enough to be "in the cloud" anymore.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
That fob was on their for 6 months...the key thing here is it was my choice...and its not on there anymore and im still getting the discount.
Oh you better not shout! Your better not cry! You better not pout! I'm telling you why, Insurance co. is coming to town.
It's making a list, checking it twice. Gonna find out who's naughty and nice! Insurance co. is coming to town.
It knows if you've been sleeping. It knows when you're awake. It knows if you've been bad of good, So be good or you will PAY!
But don't worru, We have SSRIs to help with the natural depression and sense of dread this will create. Better a gram than a damn!
see above comment
Thank you Dave Raggett
Baltimore Gas and Electronic (BGE) has been going around installing "Smart Meters"; you can opt out but it costs $75 initially and $11 for each month you don't have a "Smart Meter". I opted out, my neighbors, not wanting to pay the extra cost, had one installed.
What do the consumers gain by installing a "Smart Meter"?
I haven't found anything useful except that meters can be checked via RFID so a utility man doesn't come inside.
Lots of other things to worry about though:
http://marylandsmartmeteraware...
The spirit of HIPPA was to keep the fact that you are a pot smoking, HIV infected (but otherwise productive and high-functioning) person out of the hands of anyone THAT YOU DONT WANT TO HAVE IT.
Guess what, I work in healthcare and have 10 more storied like this.... if you think your health insurance and healthcare providers are vangaurds of privacy.... ROTFLMAO... you have no idea.
That's why the wealthy and famous are always admitted under pseudonyms and pay cash, but only to the Director of Account Payable.... LOL we normal people are fucked.
Also, Soulskill is a douchebag.
NHS being efficient -- and not to forget it produces funny scenes like this one from Yes Ministerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5zEb1oS9A&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Single payer.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
It's a cliche on slashdot, where every sixth article has 100 comments using it. There have to be more ways to compare society to a prison than just using the name of single prison design, no matter how effective that design happened to be.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
s/many more/infinitesimally less/
The number of crashes that happen with both parties following the law is practically none. Pretty much every crash is due to multiple factors, but a healthy majority of fatal crashes are caused by the big three: speeding, failing to yield and running red lights. The rest are caused by a variety of causes. Starting with what you might suspect, cell phone usage and drunk driving, and ending with random low probability stuff like heart attacks and vehicle defects.
If we just tamed the big three the US would save 15,000+ lives each year and prevent another 1,000,000 casualties.
I'll harp on it again. People love crime. People want to cheat their insurance companies just as insurance companies love cheating the public. The idea that both parties must be both honest and transparent are simply un American . And insurance companies have a lot of things to look at. Your eating and drinking habits not only effect your life and health insurance but also effect your car insurance as well. People that have heart attacks or strokes make for big car crashes. Your Home owners insurance should be effected if you or others smoke in your home. So the trick is to fool the system. People won't vote for crime and corruption even when they love it. So the answer is to elect the most rotten, corrupt and lazy to office under the guise that they are wonderful people. To that end I am forming the Committee to Elect Rick Scott. I can think of no worse, more corrupt or wrong headed man in the nation to put in a powerful position. Maybe we could get him elected president and that way we can be assured of plenty of crime and idiotic behavior in our future. Hell, we tried electing good people and look at the mess we are in. So help me elect a real monster, Florida governor Rick Scott.
How about raising home insurance rates if you publicly declare that you are a climate change denier, those of who do get it shouldn't have to pony up as much as those who ' don't believe the risk is real'.
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
There are only two types of people who freely buy insurance: cowards and those who think they can fool the insurance company into paying more than the premiums cost.
Both groups are immoral.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The insurance industry has owned Washington for some time now. Naturally they would be able to get away with this kind of invasion of privacy with zero backlash. In 2010 the insurance industry started cashing in on their investment by pushing through the ACA bill, but that is only the start of it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I suppose the natural stopping point might be the balance between an individual's willingness to be monitored and the desire to reduce insurance premiums.
Until single-payer. "You have 100 calories left on today's quota, consumer. Enjoy them sensibly, for the good of everyone!"
It's called Continuum, and it doesn't end well.
There's a big flaw in the post. Insurance companies offer savings if you have a box in your car. Very different from charging you extra for eating too much ice-cream. There's a big difference between incentivising good behavior and punishing bad.
Coupled with the other recent story about humans in the minority by year 20xx. The Insurance Companies will have a vested interest in keeping us alive forever.
In order to bill us perpetually! "And in those days men will seek death and will not find it;"
(Which also means the insurance companies will be run by women, in order to perpetually nag the men.)
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
"Hurrrr he used a word I don't like so I'll just disregard his statement and the entire thrust of the article."
I can only feel pity for folks like you.