UnitedHealth is the Latest Industry Player to Embrace Wearables

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For most people, health insurance is something they would rather not think about. For better or worse, UnitedHealth always wants to be on your mind – and on your wrist.

The health insurance giant is revamping its UnitedHealthcare Rewards program to offer financial incentives for customers who engage in healthy behaviors – as tracked by wearable devices like a Fitbit, an Apple Watch or a Garmin.

An Apple Watch every day…

The Affordable Care Act has prevented health insurers from charging additional fees or denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions for over a decade. This is forcing insurers to get creative as they confront the ever-increasing cost of care in the US; Total healthcare spending in 2021 was nearly $13,000 per person, or $4.3 trillion overall, about one-fifth of national GDP, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

One solution they came up with: if health problems can’t be penalized, why not incentivize healthy habits? Vitality Health, a subsidiary of global insurance provider Discovery, has built an entire business out of this strategy. Not that it doesn’t trust you or anything, but Vitality uses wearables and the Internet of Things to track everything from blood pressure to cholesterol levels, creating a point reward system that incentivizes healthy behavior. Now UnitedHealth, which has 26 million US customers, wants to launch a similar program:

• Rewards are granted via cash vouchers or credits to health savings accounts and can be earned by taking a minimum of 5,000 steps and 15 minutes of exercise per day. Members can earn up to $1,000 annually.
• The program will initially be available to UnitedHealth’s 3 million patients with fully insured plans before rolling out to self-insured plan members sometime next year.

“The goal of the program is really to motivate our members to take care of their health and get involved in these activities and ultimately improve their quality of life,” Samantha Baker, chief consumer officer of UH’s retail business, told Axios.

foul play: Critics claim there is a blurred line between incentivizing good behavior and deterring bad behavior. And by the looks of it, companies could probably do it if they wanted to. “Insurance companies are now using [health] data for rewards programs, but there are no rules preventing them from doing the opposite,” warns the American Medical Association. While most people would love to have a doctor in the family, being a big brother isn’t exactly the right thing to do Having health insurers Same.