If you take steps to lead a healthy life style, including regular exercise, you are likely to be less of a liability to insurance companies. Shouldn't you pay less.
How should fitness be measured though?
If you take steps to lead a healthy life style, including regular exercise, you are likely to be less of a liability to insurance companies. Shouldn't you pay less.
How should fitness be measured though?
Just asking unhealthy people to pay their fair share.
You should get a 5% discount if you can run a mile in under 7 minutes. If you can't run a mile in under 9 minutes you pay 5% more.
Conundrum wrote:
If you take steps to lead a healthy life style, including regular exercise, you are likely to be less of a liability to insurance companies.
This is incorrect. Healthy people are a greater drain on health insurance companies because they live longer.
They also go in for more regular checkups.
I'm a 2:45 marathoner and addicted daily runner, and I know I sure don't deserve lower health insurance premiums. I go to more doctors than any of my inactive friends. Besides my annual physical (which many of them don't do), I'm pretty much a regular at my orthopedist's office, including the most recent visit that included a $1,100 MRI and related tests.
I know it makes us feel better to say, "Those stupid fat people...", but from a pure insurance standpoint, you'd probably be less of a drain if you neglected your health and ate, smoked and drank yourself to an early grave than if you run high mileage, treat a variety of injuries, and live to age 90 (and treat typical old-age maladies along the way).
Conundrum wrote:
If you take steps to lead a healthy life style, including regular exercise, you are likely to be less of a liability to insurance companies. Shouldn't you pay less.
How should fitness be measured though?
Well, your boy Obama says smokers can be charged an extra 50% on insurance premiums than non-smokers, under his health care Act.
1. unhealthy people cost more for insurance companies because they tend to come down with diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer (and these are just a few examples). Treating these maladies costs a fortune compared to preventative medicine like physicals, etc.2. most healthy people are not injuring themselves so much that they have to get mris, surgeries, etc. that often. Perhaps a few injury prone runners do these things a lot.
Bum Knee wrote:
I'm a 2:45 marathoner and addicted daily runner, and I know I sure don't deserve lower health insurance premiums. I go to more doctors than any of my inactive friends. Besides my annual physical (which many of them don't do), I'm pretty much a regular at my orthopedist's office, including the most recent visit that included a $1,100 MRI and related tests.
I know it makes us feel better to say, "Those stupid fat people...", but from a pure insurance standpoint, you'd probably be less of a drain if you neglected your health and ate, smoked and drank yourself to an early grave than if you run high mileage, treat a variety of injuries, and live to age 90 (and treat typical old-age maladies along the way).
Not true wrote:
1. unhealthy people cost more for insurance companies because they tend to come down with diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer (and these are just a few examples). Treating these maladies costs a fortune compared to preventative medicine like physicals, etc.
2. most healthy people are not injuring themselves so much that they have to get mris, surgeries, etc. that often. Perhaps a few injury prone runners do these things a lot.
Unhealthy person: dead at 70.
Healthy person: dead at 95.
That's an extra 25 years to ring up healthcare costs.
You're not looking at the whole picture. People, who are disciplined and conscientious enough to be succesful in keeping themselves in shape, have more time and energy to devote towards their working lives. Therefore they have a greater earning potential and should be charged more for insurance because they can afford to pay more than the rest of us fat lazy slobs.
Down with the fit! They're always rubbing their good health in our faces, and quite frankly, I'm sick of it.
Not true wrote:
1. unhealthy people cost more for insurance companies because they tend to come down with diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer (and these are just a few examples). Treating these maladies costs a fortune compared to preventative medicine like physicals, etc.
2. most healthy people are not injuring themselves so much that they have to get mris, surgeries, etc. that often. Perhaps a few injury prone runners do these things a lot.
Actually, according to this article in the New York Times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748884.html?_r=0, reality checker is correct, non-smokers and non-obese cost more in the long run, since they live longer. Healthier people just cost less when they are younger.
Competitive distance runners are such a small percentage of the population that they make no statistical difference in the overall pool of insured people, and it's a good thing. I know I cost my health insurance carrier more than my non-running friends because I use more healthcare services than they do - both preventative and to treat running injuries.
There's also a trade off between treating chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease and dying relatively young versus being healthy and living to an old age. If you make it to age 90, you're going to be using a lot of healthcare, even if you're a relatively healthy 90.
From an insurance standpoint, the win-win would be to be very healthy AND die young!
hilarious! the same clowns that vote for, support, & argue in favor of over regulation that PREVENTS health insurance companies from reducing rates for healthy people are now opining about the merits of lower insurance rates for healthy people? Don't you think the health insurance companies have already considered this as a way to increase market share of healthy people - something they'd love to do? So what stops them from implementing such a scenario? hint: health insurance is a very heavily regulated industry..
my name is Lance wrote:
hilarious! the same clowns that vote for, support, & argue in favor of over regulation that PREVENTS health insurance companies from reducing rates for healthy people are now opining about the merits of lower insurance rates for healthy people? Don't you think the health insurance companies have already considered this as a way to increase market share of healthy people - something they'd love to do? So what stops them from implementing such a scenario? hint: health insurance is a very heavily regulated industry..
Dude, it's regulated to keep them from OVERCHARGING. Try to keep up here.
Not true wrote:
1. unhealthy people cost more for insurance companies because they tend to come down with diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer (and these are just a few examples). Treating these maladies costs a fortune compared to preventative medicine like physicals, etc.
2. most healthy people are not injuring themselves so much that they have to get mris, surgeries, etc. that often. Perhaps a few injury prone runners do these things a lot.
This is just flat-out false.
Runners are just as likely to get cancer and Type-1 diabetes (which is costlier to treat). Active folks are ALWAYS getting injured and racking up therapy, MRIs and so forth. Not just runners, but regular active people who work out on a daily basis. Injuries are very common. Healthy people are MUCH more likely to get preventative care, which means more visits. Of my patients, I see the healthy ones far more often.
...aaannnnddd they live longer.
Conundrum wrote:
If you take steps to lead a healthy life style, including regular exercise, you are likely to be less of a liability to insurance companies. Shouldn't you pay less.
How should fitness be measured though?
Do you really think this will happen in this PC world we live in?
Reality Checker wrote:
Conundrum wrote:If you take steps to lead a healthy life style, including regular exercise, you are likely to be less of a liability to insurance companies.
This is incorrect. Healthy people are a greater drain on health insurance companies because they live longer.
Another LR poster making up facts again.
For what it's worth, I work in health insurance as an actuary.
First things first, sick people are more of a drain than healthy people. In health insurance they say death is cheap, which is true. Once you die you don't cost anything, but guess what? You also aren't paying any premium. Ideally, your insurance company wants you to be healthy (i.e. not utilize too much care) and continue to pay premium as long as possible.
Studies have shown that people incur extreme medical costs in the last year of life. Doesn't matter who you are. If you die at 65 or 95, the costs are similar. Part of the reason why 65 year olds cost so much is people start to die around then. If you have someone that you KNOW is going to live to 90, chances are they won't incur too much in costs at 65.
As far as should healthy people pay less for insurance, the answer is complicated. From an academic standpoint, it makes sense that the amount you pay in premium should be directly correlated with the risk you present to your insurer. Healthy people are less likely to get sick than unhealthy people (notice that I am saying healthy and not fit; I am assuming that fit = healthy which is a nontrivial assumption, but for the sake of argument roll with it). In practice, it is very difficult for an insurer to tell whether you are healthy or not.
If you get insurance through your employer and your company has at least 100 employees, your rate actually is based in how healthy your company is. Every year, your carrier compares how much everyone in your company paid in premium and how much they had to pay in medical claims. Your carrier will have a desired ratio in mind for cost/premium, usually in the 80-85% range (the remaining 15-20% goes to admin and profit, note that for-profit companies generally run a 3-5% profit margin and not-for-profits run 1-2%. In 2012 my company lost money, about 1%). So, if your company's claims produced a 70% loss ratio you might not get a rate increase. If those claims produced a 90% loss ratio, you will see a big rate increase. The norm is an increase because medical trend runs at approximately 8% a year, the whole crux of the insurance problem.
Insurance companies are trying to come up with products that reward healthy behavior, although it is difficult. Our newest one involves rewards for going to your PCP and somehow meeting certain metrics, I am not too clear on it. Expect more in the future I guess.
Health care costs are about the same in either case. In the second case social security payments are a lot higher though. So the government should encourage smoking to decrease the SS deficit.Neither one has anything to do with health insurance costs though. Very few people have health insurance after 65. Most are on socialized med (i.e. medicare). The health insurance companies job is to spent as little as possible to get you to 65 and then dump you on the government.
Mortality wrote:
Not true wrote:1. unhealthy people cost more for insurance companies because they tend to come down with diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer (and these are just a few examples). Treating these maladies costs a fortune compared to preventative medicine like physicals, etc.
2. most healthy people are not injuring themselves so much that they have to get mris, surgeries, etc. that often. Perhaps a few injury prone runners do these things a lot.
Unhealthy person: dead at 70.
Healthy person: dead at 95.
That's an extra 25 years to ring up healthcare costs.
Kind of a slippery slope. Do you drink? there's an added charge. Do you eat fast food (even if you're skinny)? Another charge. Do you run marathons? Oh there evidence that might lead to heart stress, add some more on. Oh you like to ski? well people that ski have a greater risk of injury so you should pay more. I would be carful in this area. Im not sure how old you are but you may stop running or get an injury and gain weight and then you are paying more.