‘Reward healthy lifestyles instead of punishing unhealthy people’
A health economist in Leuven has put forward proposals to change the way insurance companies encourage people to live healthier lifestyles, looking at examples in the US and Germany
Taking responsibility
“There is an increasingly call to let people take responsibility for their lifestyle,” Erik Schokkaert of the University of Leuven said to De Standaard. “But it always revolves around penalties, for example for people who smoke, while people at the bottom of the social ladder are more unhealthy and will be affected more heavily.”
Schokkaert was inspired by initiatives in the US and Germany, where insurance companies give discounts on life insurance and policies for incapacity for work if a person can prove that they live a healthy lifestyle, using health apps and wearable technology.
Belgian health insurance funds currently reward members for healthy behaviour by refunding a gym subscription, for example, but they don’t work yet with results commitments as is done with health apps. According to critics, monitoring systems will cause privacy problems if insurance funds can track people’s everyday behaviour.
Luc Van Gorp, head of health insurer Christian Mutualiteit, told Radio 1 that he considered the proposal “an anti-social measure”. He said the budget of health-care sector should not be used to reward people who are already doing well but to support those who need it to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
