Comment by Cadsby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cadsby | Hacker News Reader

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I think on a principled level, many are becoming concerned about the ever increasing volume of data being collected on all of us. It isn't necessarily about any particular subset of data, or all the plausible abuses of it, it's just the idea that some would rather not have every move they make being recorded and logged into a system they have no information on or ability to influence.

More specific to insurance companies, the potential/plausible abuses to increase profit don't take much effort to ferret out. And to make matters worse the data they use will invariable flag a lot of false positives that you'll have little to no way of fixing. For example, my girlfriend regularly picks me up a pack of cigarettes on her way home from work. She usually uses her credit card instead of cash. Ok, now she's flagged in the system as being a chronic smoker and her rates get jacked up to holy hell. Except, of course, she's not actually a smoker and I'd be super skeptical about her ability to reasonably explain this to some random customer service rep over the telephone.

Data mining usage habits rarely result in lower prices for people making positive, less risky choices. Non-smokers will probably be giving a trivial token discount, but unlikely anything more.

Data mining usage habits rarely result in lower prices for people making positive, less risky choices.

This is because we live in an inflationary economy. Most prices go up. As a healthy guy, I'd like the price increases to be inflicted on the fattie smokers rather than me.

Not that it really matters in the context of health insurance - the laws surrounding it are structured in such a way as to subsidize the fattie smokers at the expense of healthy gym guy, regardless of what info the insurance company has (and they will become worse in a couple of years, unless the supreme court stops it - good luck with that).

As a healthy guy, I'd like the price increases to be inflicted on the fattie smokers rather than me.

I have a friend who agrees with you, and I am constantly dismayed at the willingness of people to throw their fellow human beings under the bus.

There are better ways of improving total health than letting insurance companies screw more cash out of the more vulnerable members of society.

You're dismayed that some people believe the unhealthiest of the population ought to pay the largest share of healthcare costs? Maybe you disagree, but "dismayed" seems very harsh.

Depends on whether you are talking about preventable disease or not.

All diseases are preventable, some are just not worth the cost of preventing.

I wasn't aware of a cure for cancer.

Prevention is not the same as cure. Historically, cancer has been prevented by dying of something else first.

Why are you characterizing people who choose to overeat and engage in dangerous habits as the "more vulnerable members of society"?

Because those habits are associated with lower income and education levels. An increase in expenses is the last thing someone on the brink of financial ruin needs, and advocating for such seems to show a lack of empathy.

This is one reason the Obama cigarette taxes were outrageous.

I'm less opposed to directly increasing cigarette taxes than I am to secretly raising insurance prices for people whose credit card statements include fast food. At least the cigarette price is visible up front, and the health risks of smoking are well understood. On the other hand, television constantly bombards its viewers with irresistible portrayals of people enjoying their products, with no up front indication that regular consumption of these products will (as hypothesized by the original article) put a black mark on your reputation that only corporations can see.

If someone is on the brink of financial ruin, they should stop wasting money on cigarettes and excess food. That will improve both their health and their financial situation.

To describe such a person as "vulnerable" is a little silly. Their vulnerability is something they created themselves.

Tell me. Have you ever been on the brink of financial ruin? When life seems bleak, rationality becomes incredibly remote. You'll burn through all your mental willpower just stressing about how you're going to pay enough of your bills to keep the utilities running. Cheap, high-calorie food and other time wasters typically avoided by the more financially able become essential escapes from the misery of baseline existence. They become the only way to stay sane.

If you want people to stop eating fast food and watching TV all day, give them something more to live for than their next junk food hit instead of making their continued survival even more uncertain.

I guess I disagree - I don't think that people with "lower income and education levels" are mentally incompetent and unable to manage their own lives.

I think they merely have different utility functions than me, and assign a lower value to health, but a higher value to leisure. And I'd argue they have the right to continue eating chips and watching TV - they just don't have the right to force other people to pay for their choices.

But lets take your theory of mental incompetence seriously - in that case, isn't the solution some sort of institutionalization? I.e., assign some bureaucrat to make good choices for them, rather than merely forcing responsible adults to pay for their irrational bad choices?

I didn't say they're mentally incompetent. I said that the state of being poor imposes such a high mental cost that even the intelligent poor struggle to apply their intelligence consistently. Even if we assume (incorrectly) that poor people are exclusively those on the left half of the intelligence distribution, the answer to their problems isn't charging them more money, thus making their problems generational because they can't afford the education, nutrition, and childcare necessary to end the cycle of ignorance. The answer lies in making a positive life more appealing, e.g. by making healthy foods more affordable, more available, and tastier; improving access to education (MITx/edX/Khan Academy/etc.); making education and societal contribution more culturally appealing through changes in entertainment and early education; etc.

It's probably worth mentioning the philosophy that drives my opinions on these issues. I want to minimize individual and total human suffering while maximizing individual and total human potential. In other words, I believe that every human being should have the right not to suffer, along with the opportunity to make their best contribution to the progress of humanity. Being poor and trapped by the mental stresses of staying alive leads to suffering, fast food temporarily alleviates that suffering, and increasing the cost of health insurance will exacerbate that suffering. I still care even if it's someone else suffering while I enjoy the money I might save each month by not paying for their lifestyle.

I said that the state of being poor imposes such a high mental cost that even the intelligent poor struggle to apply their intelligence consistently...I believe that every human being should have the right not to suffer, along with the opportunity to make their best contribution to the progress of humanity.

You seem to want to have it both ways. Either the poor are adults capable of making their own choices, or they aren't.

If they are mentally competent, they have the right not to "suffer" ("suffering" isn't the word I'd normally use to describe a life of leisure). They just choose not to exercise it.

Your definition of competence seems to differ significantly from mine. For one thing, there's not some binary threshold of competence vs. incompetence. What I'm describing is a temporary condition caused by depletion of mental willpower. You also seem to be applying a degree of the typical mind fallacy. Maybe you are the ubermensch incarnate and could maintain total control of your creative mental faculties through the most painful torture, but most people have limits. That doesn't make them incompetent; it just makes them human.

Maybe you are the ubermensch incarnate and could maintain total control of your creative mental faculties through the most painful torture...

Hardly. I certainly wouldn't hold a person being tortured responsible for their actions, but I also wouldn't permit them to make their own decisions.

My position is that the right to make a choice and the responsibility for that choice go hand in hand. Either the poor are allowed to make choices and suffer the consequences, or they aren't. If you'd like shades of grey, perhaps they could jointly make decisions with a guardian, and the guardian is partially responsible for those choices.

I take exception to the example of invisibly raising of insurance prices as a result of unannounced data mining. It's entirely unfair to hold people to standards they aren't told about in advance.

Mainly healthcare prices, education and some classes of real estate go up. Those are extremely rent-sought markets, not subject to competitive forces. And inflation is now running less than the 2% Fed target ( including the things mentioned above ). The "fatty smokers" are a rhetorical lightning rod, and hardly a threat to your way of life. Meanwhile healthy gym guy runs up a sports medicine bill.... the emphasis on "fitness" began with John Kennedy, designed to increase the fitness of draftees, and has gone mad-cow viral since ( especially when they figured out you'd pay $100 for a $5 pair of shoes in the 1980s... )

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