“Apple and Aetna held a series of secret discussions last week to bring Apple’s health and fitness-tracking smartwatch to millions more people connected to Aetna, according to three people familiar with the matter,” Christina Farr and Jeffrey McCracken report for CNBC.
“The insurer, which covers 23 million, offers an Apple Watch to its 50,000 employees as part of its corporate wellness program,” Farr and McCracken report. “Now, Aetna is negotiating with Apple on a plan to offer a free or discounted Apple Watch, Apple’s wearable device, as a perk to its members… One of the people said Aetna’s proposed timeline is slated for early next year.”
“The move by Aetna is part of its push to increase customer interest in a healthier lifestyle and a better tracking of diet, said one of the people,” Farr and McCracken report. “The move could be a boon in sales for Apple Watch, which now offers health and fitness-tracking as its primary usage. Apple Watch recently overtook Fitbit as the top-selling wearable tracker, with shipments reaching 22 million for the first three months of 2017, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.”
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Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If this deal gets done:
Those who want to sit around, munching chips, while encasing themselves in growing rolls of fat should pay more for the costs brought on by their heart attacks, gout, diabetes, strokes, asthma, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, and cancer treatments.
Next we need a way for Apple Watch to detect smokers and charge them more, too. People who make the effort to be healthy, regardless of whether they actually are lucky enough to be healthy or not*, should pay less for their health insurance as they tax the system far less than those who are sedentary, obese and/or smoke. Just as life insurance costs more for those who live unhealthy lifestyles, their health insurance should cost more, too. (Life insurers should utilize Apple Watches in much the same way.)
*If a person is obese for reasons beyond a sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle, who is actively trying to be healthy as shown by their Apple Watch, but other conditions prevent fat loss (Hypothyroidism, Cushing’s syndrome, hormonal imbalances, Syndrome X, medications, etc.) they should get a lower rate than those who are simply leading sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles. Most cases of obesity are due to sedentary lifestyles and consuming more calories than required, not medical conditions.
Furthermore, people should have every right to sit around eating chips and smoking until they drop dead (unfortunately, it’s rarely that clean; they often first tax the health system to a great degree by developing diabetes, cancers, banging off a couple of heart attacks, having a stroke here and there, etc. before they finally make their exit) and insurance companies should have every right to charge them more since, overall, they cost far more to take care of due to their poor choice(s) which raises costs for those who are trying to take care of themselves and therefore cost the system far less.
If you’re fat because you sit around too much and take in more calories than you can possible burn off by sitting on your ass all day, don’t be offended. Either keep on as you’re doing and pay more to cover your increased costs or put down the chips, stand up and get moving! (You can thank us later by continuing to visit during the 10-20 extra years you’ll get by following our latter advice.)
SEE ALSO:
In major win for Apple, Aetna becomes first insurance company to subsidize Apple Watch – September 27, 2016
New ‘SweatCoin’ iPhone app pays people to get fit – May 5, 2016
Why you’ll wear an Apple Watch to keep your job – March 14, 2016
Share your fitness data for an Apple Watch – or cash – March 2, 2016
Tim Cook hints Apple might build a health device – November 10, 2015
Apple should double down on Apple Watch’s health sensors, battery life, and waterproofing – October 2, 2015
Health insurer will charge more for lazy people, less for active people, based on Apple Watch sensors – September 18, 2015
If there is a new Apple Watch coming out by December, and if it indeed has a blood glucose reading smart band, it will take off like a rocket. Health tracking will go mainstream.
MDN Take: “Those who want to sit around, munching chips, while encasing themselves in growing rolls of fat… ”
Sounds like The Donald!!!
Sounds more like Michael Moore to me. Trump seems to be pretty active, but unfortunately he’s usually playing golf at his luxury golf courses. I’d imagine his thumbs are in good shape since he never stops with the bullshit tweeting.
There will no longer be good reason for reasonably well-to-do fat people to accuse others of fat shaming them.
I’ve earned my small, but discernible role of fat, thank you.
That’s one way to push a product that’s going no where. Next stop, Medicare and Medicaid. Apple better hurry before the GOP cut those programs so the rich can have more tax breaks.
Nice plan. Just keep in mind that offering a device to employees and clients doesn’t necessarily equate to all of them taking advantage of the offer. I can see stand alone devices acquiring more takers but for a device like the Apple Watch the target audience is more or less constrained to iPhone owners that don’t already have a relatively new Apple Watch.
Some things you can control; some things you can’t. Choosing the wrong parents isn’t a good idea. Neither is continued smoking. Your rants aren’t helpful to the conversation.
By vindictively pulling out of California where it made 200 million profit last year, Aetna behaved irresponsibly to its shareholders.
It pulled out, a federal judge found, because of the Feds. refused to allow it to take over a competing insurance company, not because it lost money which it and its free market globalists friends on conservative talk radio who cite the pullout as evience of the failure of Obamacare to justify Aetna’s pull-out.
After that centralized solution rant (“Those who want to sit around, munching chips, while encasing themselves in growing rolls of fat should pay more for the costs…”), no one should accuse this blog of being “right wing.”
In that same vein, can we have the watch detect one’s chances of catching AIDS or other veneral diseases?