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Comment by louprado | Hacker News Reader

How is calculation of health insurance premiums not #1 on this list ?

Recently I purchased a DIY mole removal product from Amazon. An expansive actuary table would show a "concern about moles" has a slight positive correlation with "skin cancer". Arguably my premium should go up because of this.

It also blows my mind that Amazon won't allow you to delete a purchase from your Amazon order history. It is there forever and there is no reason that data can't be sold even if the account is closed. To be fair I am making assumptions without having read the privacy policy in Amazon's EULA.

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I agree that this is a glaring omission. Car insurance companies already have monitoring devices you can plug into your ODBII connector that monitors all your driving behavior. OnStar also has the ability to report driving behaviors to insurance companies. Or how about companies that claim your credit worthiness can be judged by your Facebook friends and posts. How long until these extremely invasive practices become so profitable that companies make it required? I worked for a company whose Heath insurance offered $50 to employees that got a heath screening through them. The next year it was no longer a discount, but a fee if you did not participate.

Insurance makes sense for random events, especially not under the insured’s control. Ignoring healthcare, since it’s not even an insurancable risk, people who drive safely are subsidizing people who drive in more risky ways, but only because in the past, the technology wasn’t there (or cheap enough) to provide all of the data to accurately price them. Now that it is possible, I don’t see why people who take more risks on the road should be subsidized by those who don’t.

My comment is on the loss of privacy. I am not an aggressive driver and I suspect that I might get a discount if I joined one of these programs, but I value my privacy too much for that. I do not want my every move monitored by my insurance. OnStar would even have the ability to report GPS location. How much longer then until the locations you visit are also factored in- or perhaps that info is used to ‘enrich’ other insurance types. What if your car insurance shared with your health insurance that you visit fast food restaurants twice a week? That’s hypothetical right now, but my point is that the data is so valuable that companies will become more and more invasive to get it- especially insurance. At some point these optional privacy violating practices will become required unless we have legislation protecting us.

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