By Bridget Carey
The Miami Herald
Nov. 10, 2006
Imagine getting frequent-flier miles for walking your dog.
Humana has recently made it a reality as part of a new way to encourage the growing number of Americans without health insurance to buy coverage.
It’s called HealthMiles Plus, and the more customers stay active, the more points they earn to turn into cash or miles with Humana’s partner, Virgin Atlantic Airways.
Elizabeth Bierbower, vice president of product innovation for Humana, showcased the recently launched GoZone, a device that plan holders wear to record how active they are. The information is then posted online, adding points to the person’s account.
The creation was designed to “attract people from the uninsured pool and try to give people back something who are purchasing health insurance,”
Bierbower said.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/15975233.htm
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
Insurers do not market their products to the majority of the uninsured since most of them are not able to pay the premiums and many of them have preexisting disorders which would have an adverse effect on their risk pools and result in an upward pressure on their premiums. A small minority of the uninsured have above average incomes and are healthy. Insurers are interested in mining this population to select out these few who are healthy and can afford insurance.
Humana has now introduced the ultimate in cherry-picking and cream-skimming products. They are selling HealthMiles Plus to healthy individuals who not only claim to exercise regularly but are willing to prove it by wearing the GoZone physical activity recorder. Those who are not in great shape and do not have the income to pay the premiums need not apply.
In a remarkable show of chutzpah, this vice president of Humana has the gall to present a blatant cherry-picking program to a conference on addressing the problem of the uninsured, as if it were a solution.
We continue with policies that allow the private insurance industry to skim off the healthy who can pay the premiums, while we concentrate those with higher costs and fewer assets into the giant risk pool of the uninsured. This greatly compounds the difficulty of providing affordable, comprehensive coverage for the uninsured.
It is utterly absurd to continue to support policies that take care of the private insurers while rejecting policies that take care of those with health care needs. Private insurers do not want that business. Why should we let them continue to skim off the majority who are healthy and can afford their premiums?
The fundamental function of health insurance is to shift the costs of the few with needs to the many who are healthy, making health care affordable for everyone. Since the private insurers refuse to provide that service, we need to dismiss them and establish our own public, universal risk pool that would do precisely that.