The insurer Generali France will launch the “Vitaly” program to encourage its customers to improve their health with bonuses. Patients fear an increase in health inequalities.
This is a first in France. From January 1, 2017, the insurer Generali France will market a complementary health insurance rewarding the healthy lifestyle of its customers with gifts. Indeed, as the law prohibits reducing the premium of virtuous policyholders, the reward will take the form of reductions with partners, such as Club Med or Weight Watchers …
This device, called “Vitality”, will only be accessible under collective contracts and will be optional. That is to say that each company will decide whether or not it offers it to its employees. They will also be free to subscribe. But despite these guarantees, worried patients stepped up to the plate a few days ago.
In a press release, the Ciss (1), which brings together 42 user associations working in the field of health, writes that this “carrot to motivate the insured to use these offers no longer has any link with health”. This is why the Collective wonders: “Are we really trying to motivate and support changes in the behavior of those who need it, or to reward those who have no difficulty in complying with prevention standards? ? “
A widening of health inequalities
Worse, the Ciss believes that such an approach risks further widening health inequalities, “leaving aside those who most need to be truly supported to gradually change their behavior”.
Same story with Emmanuel Hirsch, director of the ethics space of the Ile-de-France region, who told Why actor that “a socially vulnerable person does not have the same capacity to assume responsibility for their health, because they neglect themselves more than others”.
He also recalled that “studies show that addictions to tobacco or alcohol are more frequent in this population” and stressed that “these people do not have the necessary resources to eat organic, for example”.
Personal data for sale?
Finally, the Ciss warns of a final risk linked to Generali’s new supplement: the collection of personal health data. These patients write: “We have never seen an insurer collect data and do nothing with it! It is therefore that they will probably be resold to the partners of the Vitaly program and to many others certainly ”.
And the employer’s data collection worries him even more. Because he will now be able to access anonymized data on his employees. ” By what right ? To do what ? For whose benefit? “; are all unanswered questions, regrets the Ciss. But now that the alert has been sounded, “it is urgent that the National Commission for Informatics and Freedoms (Cnil) takes up this specific case ”, concludes the Collective.
(1) Interassociative Health Collective
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