It sounds almost like a headline from The Onion: “Swiss Insurance Company Will Charge Higher Premiums for Lazy People.” But, no, that’s from Popular Science (reporting, ironically, on developments likely to be considered neither popular nor science). Posted online in mid-September, the article recounts a story from Swiss news website The Local about a big insurer there called CSS that’s looking into new data-driven ways to control costs. Its recent test program, called MyStep, uses fitness trackers to record the daily step count of CSS customers. Those who hit the company’s target of 10,000 steps per day qualify for discounts on their insurance premiums. 

There’s nothing wrong with that, in principle. Insurance discounts for healthy lifestyle choices have been routine for years. It’s a great way to align incentives with desirable outcomes. But this particular company is already hoping it can be mandatory rather than voluntary. The results of the test “should reveal whether and how insurance companies can introduce an appropriate offer tailored to customers’ needs,” Volker Schmidt of CSS told The Local, in a deft bit of corporate-speak. It’s not hard to see what he’s driving at: higher rates. “Given the increased cost of healthcare,” he said, “we will inevitably have to promote individual responsibility in order to strengthen solidarity between insured people.” Err, solidarity?

Such a program would likely benefit able-bodied people. But what about those with asthma or COPD who can’t meet the mandatory daily step requirement? Or those lacking the resources to buy a pricey fitness tracker? Or someone whose job or family demands are such that daily exercise at that level and of that type just doesn’t fit? I fail to see the solidarity any of that would create. Just the opposite, probably. 

With a final flourish of tone-deaf language, Mr. Schmidt concluded, “Eventually we will be implanted with a nano-chip which will constantly monitor us and transmit the data to a control centre.” What could possibly go wrong? 

Health tracking technology offers abundant opportunities to improve the world. Apple recently showed off an app that will continuously monitor fetal heart rates for pregnant women who wear an Apple Watch. Data sent to the ob-gyn will reveal potential problems immediately. Novartis and Google’s “smart” contact lens to continuously monitor blood glucose levels was just green-lighted for human trials. But no one, regardless of political persuasion, wants to be coerced into having an implanted chip send personal health data to an insurer. A doctor, maybe. Oneself, sure. But an actuary at Cigna or CMS? No, thank you.

This month, as you begin to adopt the new ICD-10 coding system—mandatorily, of course—that will increase the amount of health data collected by orders of magnitude, consider the cons as well as the pros of so-called “big data” efforts. They can harm just as easily as they help.