Can Wearables and IoT Reduce my Health Insurance Premiums?

I attended a meetup at R/GA in NYC last night sponsored by Wearable Wednesday with the Internet of Things (IoT) NY group invited as well.  Conceptually, how does one develop wearable solutions that are connected to a larger platform to provide data and analytics that can be of value to the user/consumer. Got me thinking. Lots of wearables today collect data on health, fitness and personal activity.

Fitbit.  Jawbone, Nike Plus.  And the yet to be released Apple Watch, for starters.  My wife's Jawbone not only counts her steps and daily activity, it tells her when she should go to sleep, how long she had "deep sleep" versus "restless sleep" and vibrates to tell her when to get up in the AM.  I use an alarm clock.  Old school.

Forward to the internet of things.  Why is this data, which clearly demonstrates how active and healthy my wife is, not being fed to my health insurance company?  Auto insurance companies now want you to attach a device to your on-board diagnostics port (OBD II to you acronym fans out there) to track your driving habits, and will base your auto insurance rates on this data.  Progressive has Snapshot.  Why can't there be a Snapshot for Aetna, my health insurance carrier?

Why should my wife and I not receive a discount for being active and healthy?  Technology exists to capture and report the data.  Is anyone working on this solution?  They should be.

One of my pet peeves when I researched and signed up for health insurance was the fact the 15 page application NEVER asked how active my wife and I are.  It only wanted to know pre-existing conditions.  Do you smoke?  Do you drink?  Do you take controlled substances?  Not once did it ask how many times I work out a week.  How far I run.  What's my pace.  How far I ride my road bike.  At what distance and duration.  Not once.  I track all of the preceeding data with a Nike Plus Fuelband and Garmin.  I'm happy to forward it to my insurance carrier if they will give me a discount on my rate.

Not being a pessimist, but do you know this won't happen?  Because, as I have said before, insurance is a pool of shared risk.  If the vast majority of the pool are not participating, those who are, and I suggest the participants will be the active people,  will skew receipts downward and leave less of a pool of money to pay for those who are not healthy.  Nothing against the non-healthy people out there, or those who are unable to exercise due to whatever affliction they may have.  The only way to balance cash requirements to pay the insurance bills, if discounts are offered to those who do, is to up the rates on those who do not participate.  See a problem with this action?  Discriminatory lawsuits.

Its the same reason not everyone wants to use Progressive's Snapshot.  If you are not a good driver, and you know who you are, do you want to pay higher premiums, and have your roll slowed, by that pesky device under the steering wheel tracking your driving patterns?

I think not.

Hopefully the tech community will continue the pursuit of solutions like these to connect wearables with the IoT and make this happen.