[superuser2]

Would you expect someone to write you flood insurance on a house without knowing where that house is located?

Should car insurance companies treat a 16 year old with a WRX and a 45 year old with a Camry as equivalent?

It's really pretty bizarre that we expect people to underwrite our health without any insight into what risks we choose to take with it.

We chose the free market as our approach to health insurance, we could at least make it efficient. Right now a lot of healthy, fit people are paying through the nose to subsidize the privacy of those with sedentary lifestyles.

[emodendroket]

Does your car insurance company require you to install a GPS tracker in your car so they can keep track of everywhere you go? Because that would be much more analogous to what the parent describes.

[mikecb]

No, but many of them give you a discount for installing an accelerometer/gps speed sensor.

[theforceawakens]

Aren't auto insurance (your choice of provider) and employer provided health insurance (no choice) tangential things?

[mikecb]

Are they?

Edit: Even if you decide not to opt-out of employer provided coverage, you don't have to participate in the wellness program, just as you don't have to participate in the gps tracking.

[emodendroket]

Personally my concern (with both things) is that they are going to normalize it so that it's first an option with an incentive, then it's the default and you have to opt out and pay some sort of penalty for doing so, and then before you know it there is no choice at all.

[superuser2]

Insurers these days offer a discount for safe driving based on a device in the OBD-II port, yes. There are also some nontraditional insurance companies that charge per mile based on such a device.

[emodendroket]

Some offer them; I do not choose to use one.

[superuser2]

Just as you can choose not to participate in a wellness program.

[emodendroket]

My employer isn't trying to cram the GPS system down my throat