Hacker News Reader

When it comes time to pay up, you better believe it.

If you're a declared "non-smoker", and die, and there's a picture of you taken after your policy data of you smoking a cigar, weed, or cigarette... good luck to your family's collection efforts.

Many health insurers are collecting lots of trivial under the new "wellness" programs that are popping up. You can be sure that they are trying to correlate gym attendance vs. various claim events.

The gist is that you wouldn't know the real 'why' of such a rate increase / quote. The real question is why do you think a corporation with the resources of a large insurance company wouldn't secretly use such information? Especially when they are famous for doing anything in their power to not pay out or cover high risk patients...

When they are allowed to, yes.

No. All the data that they use is self-reported (when you sign up for health insurance, they ask you if you smoke, etc).