Technology has made an impact on so many different areas of our lives in Longmont, Loveland, Fort Collins, Greeley, Windsor, CO, and the surrounding areas, it was only a matter of time before it made an impact on medical insurance. The team at Volk Insurance Benefits has been keeping up with the changes that technology has brought and will continue to bring to the marketplace. One of the most promising and exciting areas of healthcare is the use of wearables, like smart watches. Where once these items used to be the latest gadget that provided you with easier use of your smart phone without removing it from your pocket or purse, today these items are more sophisticated and provide health services that are accurate enough to use as a supplement to regular medical tests. And medical insurance providers are taking notice. Contact us today to learn more about how these technologies are being adopted for use in the future of medical insurance.
An Ounce of Prevention…
What insurance companies have known for years is that if the client takes on a larger portion of the risk, the less that they will need to pay out. This is because the client has an incentive to take steps that will avoid bad decisions and behavior because they have skin in the game. Wearable technologies are now providing this incentive for people and their medical insurance. If an insurance company can encourage people to use these devices, they will have less costs with insurance claims.
Now while you might be thinking that this is just greedy on the part of the insurance company, keep in mind that the clients are also gaining benefit by getting and keeping themselves healthy. The client needs to perform a qualified exercise several times per week, and in exchange the insurance company will offer them a discount for doing things that lead to a reduction in health expenditures.
These Are Early Days
While wearables have come a long way in what they can monitor and how good this monitoring is, there are still gaps to overcome to make them even more reliable. There are also concerns about the privacy of the data being collected, and how medical insurance companies would react or deal with a client that for a given month doesn’t hit their ‘goals’; would this lead to an increase in premiums? Likely this could lead to a backlash, but it’s too early in the game to know for sure.
Costs for everything continue to go up, and the ongoing battle is to get the medical insurance coverage that you need for as little as possible in Longmont, Loveland, Fort Collins, Greeley, Windsor, CO, and the surrounding areas. While wearable tech might be a worthwhile option for some in connection with their health insurance, it remains to be seen if this will spread further than the early adopters. Contact us at Volk Insurance Benefits to talk through all of your options to find the best medical insurance for your needs.