Posted on 09/27/2016 9:37:24 PM PDT by Swordmaker
“Her physician is a third party and has no say in the contract between her employer and Aetna”
And that is the problem. Mandatory or no job.
You make a lot of assumptions that are totally untrue, Varsity. You don't have a CLUE WHAT YOU ARE BLITHERING ABOUT! Nothing I described to you is "mandatory or no job."
Professional people, as my girlfriend is, drawing a six figure salary including benefits, would not stand still for being treated that way. She'd walk, and has in the past. She's recruited for several position a month in her field paying a similar income, doing similar work. She happens to like working for the best company in the industry. . . and she's the best at what she does.
The money she's saving is out of HER portion of the monthly health coverage cost, not the employer's contribution; that doesn't change! They'll pay the same couple of grand per month for her benefits coverage if she goes in and tests for the discount or not! Her qualifying for the discount which goes in her pocket has ZERO effect on the total cost for the plan for her employer pays for its cost for several hundred employees nationwide.
She did go in and qualify last week because the almost $2000 a year is nothing to sneeze at and she'll buy another piece of jewelry to add to her collection with it, but not because her employer forced her to do it by threatening her job.
>>>”At some, it will be a condition..”
This would be a concern only in a non-competitive market. In a competitive market if this condition was not worth the benefit, it would fail.
Saved from what?
Is this like all those 50% off jewelry sales, after they’ve raised the price 50%.
How does Aetna’s premiums compare with other insurers.
And I can appreciate giving a discount for actual performance (health parameters like you mentioned) that has some relationship with cause and effect, but wearing an Apple Watch??
She said the health portion discount brought her monthly portion for all her benefits, including health, life, vision, and dental plans down to about $120 per month from about $280 per month.
And I can appreciate giving a discount for actual performance (health parameters like you mentioned) that has some relationship with cause and effect, but wearing an Apple Watch??
What you fail to recognize is the Apple Watch is a VERY EFFECTIVE exercise and fitness tracker and it's also a very effective nag which subtly reminds its owner to do those things that are good for him or her that most people just forget to do. Those who use it report remarkable fitness gains, weight loss, and increase in overall health. . . many just from the awareness the watch provides. Even an hourly reminder to get up and move around improves health. . . If we do it. Similarly, studies have shown that regular reminders to spend a minute taking deep breaths will also improve health. The watch will track your expenditure of calories. . . and can also track your intake of nutrition and calories if you wish. . . and show you your metabolic balance which will indicate what you need to do to lose or gain weight.
I’d rather starve than lose my free will.
I think you have something there. Lower health care (and life insurance) premiums if you wear the company Apple Watch that reports back to the mothership your amount of daily walking, your resting heart rate, and with a bluetooth enabled scale, your weight.
Just like the Progressive insurance's Snapshot device for your car.
Yup. This is the camel's nose under the tent. The insidious nature of fascism is that, even when the government isn't directly monitoring you 24/7, the corporate cronies will be more than happy to do the job for it.
I call BS on this. The watch has only been out for a year or so. Hardly enough time for any serious studies and peer review. I've seen recent studies that say fitness bands don't do diddly for health improvement. I don't know for sure, but there seems to be conflicting reports..
It’s nit as though you can manually graph your results, right?
Insurance is inherently “socialistic” in the sense that it places you and me in a pool by which you subsidize the risks which I could control better than I do, and vice versa. The only reason it works at all is that
So you’re insured -
Remember kiddo
they don’t pay you
they pay your widow
Burma Shave
Look up what?
They were guaranteed reimbursement for losses under ObamaCare through this year and now they are pulling out.
I don't really use the health app all that much. Use it to estimate walking route distances occasionally. I can do that with the apple map. It will show daily, weekly, monthly and yearly results. You can download the health data to your desktop. I've read third party apps are better at putting the data into a usable format.
Fitness bands only report some specific data, the Apple Watch does a lot more than that. It is no mere "fitness band."
Look up the fact that not all health insurance provided by employers is Obamacare subsidized. It only needs to meet the coverage requirements.
Where in any of this does it say you lose your free will?
” and it’s also a very effective nag “
.
I’m an Apple fan from way back, have been using Macs since the 80’s. But, I’ve never quite gotten the Apple Watch, neither the cost or the utility.
So, it bothers me to say this, but with this announcement I’m beginning to get the sense that it’s going to become something of an Obamacare ankle bracelet.
Sickening.
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