Health Insurers Are Vacuuming Up Details About You -- And It Could Raise Your Rates (propublica.org)

schwit1 shares an excerpt from an in-depth report via ProPublica and NPR, which have been investigating for the past year the various tactics the health insurance industry uses to maximize its profits: A future in which everything you do -- the things you buy, the food you eat, the time you spend watching TV -- may help determine how much you pay for health insurance. With little public scrutiny, the health insurance industry has joined forces with data brokers to vacuum up personal details about hundreds of millions of Americans, including, odds are, many readers of this story. The companies are tracking your race, education level, TV habits, marital status, net worth. They're collecting what you post on social media, whether you're behind on your bills, what you order online. Then they feed this information into complicated computer algorithms that spit out predictions about how much your health care could cost them. Patient advocates warn that using unverified, error-prone "lifestyle" data to make medical assumptions could lead insurers to improperly price plans -- for instance raising rates based on false information -- or discriminate against anyone tagged as high cost. And, they say, the use of the data raises thorny questions that should be debated publicly, such as: Should a person's rates be raised because algorithms say they are more likely to run up medical bills? Such questions would be moot in Europe, where a strict law took effect in May that bans trading in personal data.

Comments

This is the point of community rating

[GrimSavant]

Community rating, charging the same premium across a cohort, is intended to prevent this sort of thing. Unregulated health insurance markets will use whatever data they can to underwrite potential policy holders, and try to isolate uninsurable individuals and either charge them unaffordable rates or deny them coverage. This is much more socially acceptable in other insurance contexts, such as an uninsurable risk for car insurance being unable to get coverage (due to many collisions or drunk driving convictions or whatever) and thus being unable to drive legally is acceptable. In the case of being unable to health coverage due to prior illness, the consequence can easily be death.

So when there is the talk about repealing Obamacare or single payer or free market maximalism for health insurance, this is very much what is at stake. Unregulated private insurers maximize their profit by isolating high risk individuals and either pricing them in or kicking them off the rolls. The money and resources spent on these deep dives are wasteful and detrimental from the standpoint of society as a whole, but totally rational from the standpoint of the individual insurers because those downsides can be offloaded onto someone else.

Re: Who is affected?

[b0s0z0ku]

The problem that the idea of a "perfectly healthy lifestyle" changes every few years or so. Is fat the demon? Or is is sugar? Or maybe carbs?

Is a glass of wine with dinner good for you, or should we all be hopping on the wagon with Carrie Nation? How much exercise is too much?

The goalposts keep shifting, and no one has any real idea of what's "healthy." In fact, it may vary by body type and genetics.

Re: That stucks

[youngone]

And let me guess, you'd rather have the government make the rules...we'll pencil you in for July 6th, 2028...

Oh, yes, that's exactly how it works in my country, where we have a proper taxpayer funded public health system.
When I got diverticulitis a few years ago and needed a bowel resection, I had to wait 25 years for surgery.
Hang on, no I didn't because the government have nothing to do with scheduling surgery, it's doctors that do it, and I had to wait two weeks. It cost me no dollars at all.
Clueless A/C

We could pay off the national debt

[rsilvergun]

in 15 years with the money we'd save switching to single payer.

If you're a fiscal conservative single payer just makes sense. The only reasons to oppose it are bad ones.