Travel News - Applying the “air miles” model to health care

http://www.economist.com/node/21531407

The column as a whole is about policy "nudges" to encourage preventative healthcare, but I think FTers will take interest in the 6th paragraph:

The Discovery group, based in Johannesburg, has crafted a programme called Vitality that applies the “air miles” model to health care. You earn points by exercising, buying healthy food or hitting certain targets. You rise through various levels, from blue to gold, as you accumulate points (rewards are adjusted to your starting level of fitness to give everybody a chance of making progress). And you are given a mixture of short- and long-term rewards ranging from reduced premiums to exotic holidays.

Awesome, I'd be in that!

I think you should have to pay less for health care if you lead an active lifestyle.. Monitoring would be the issue...

To truly recreate the air miles model, they'd need to make the rewards hard to redeem and subject to so many taxes and fees that the rewards were not much cheaper than than buying the items outright.

To truly recreate the air miles model, they'd need to make the rewards hard to redeem and subject to so many taxes and fees that the rewards were not much cheaper than than buying the items outright.

So true :D