Opinion: MAHA and insurance companies both want to treat human bodies like cars

OpinionFirst Opinion MAHA and insurance companies both want to treat human bodies like cars The telematics-car-industrial complex is a warning sign for the future of health insurance Manage alerts for this article Email this article Share this article By Andréa Becker and Paul KamufAug. 14, 2026 Becker is an assistant professor of sociology at Hunter College. Kamuf is an ex-creative director turned sociologist.

After doing three loops around the parking lot, you finally see a free spot. You step on the gas to claim it, but an SUV cuts in front of you and steals the space. You stomp on the brakes, jerking to a halt.

You might forgive the other driver, but your Toyota remembers. Later, as you drive home, your eyes wander to the restaurant that just opened on the corner. Your car loudly beeps you back to attention, the dashboard scolding, “keep eyes on the road.” Your car is watching you, and that hard stop and brief glance to the side are data sent directly to your car insurer, churning into an algorithm that decides your future premiums.Advertisement This surveillance model, called telematics, has become standard in auto insurance, as companies promise to save policyholders money if they agree to share their minute-to-minute driving data.

They don’t actually save you money — a report by the Maryland Insurance Administration showed a mixed bag of premium changes with no real overall savings — but that hasn’t dissuaded companies. As telematics grows in auto insurance, the human body is next. White House health officials and health insurance executives are pushing to bring a telematics model to mainstream medicine.

“My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable in the next four years,” health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told House members in 2025.

Kennedy claims devices that track your sleep, heart rate, glucose levels, and other metrics will help Americans “take control” of their health. And indeed, there are now countless wearables to track your vital bodily data — from your heart rate and daily steps to your ovulation and hormone levels. But if the short history of telematics in the auto insurance taught us anything, it’s to be skeptical of any promises attached to shareable surveillance data, especially if corporations are involved.Advertisement Several key ethical questions for consumers remain unanswered.

First, there is not much evidence that wearables will lower any overall costs. If anything, wearables provide an ulterior profit motive for insurance companies. Second, there are major privacy concerns embedded into the free sharing of minute-by-minute bodily data to corporations.

How exactly will the data be used and how securely stored? More broadly, the wearables endeavor promotes a highly individualized view of health that fails to acknowledge how social structures and inequalities shape our lifetime risk to disease. These risks could be attenuated with thoughtful health policy.

Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services wants to slap an Apple Watch on your wrist. Despite these unanswered questions, health and life insurance industries have already begun introducing telematics-style tracking. Programs like John Hancock’s Vitality (developed by the South African third-party company Discovery Limited), UnitedHealthcare’s Wellness Rewards, and others offer discounts, gift cards, and points for “good” behaviors.

In tandem, MAHA has been gearing up to use federal resources to promote a mass adoption of wearables. The White House strategy report to “make children healthy again,” for one, proposes linking wearable data to electronic health records. The FDA also reclassified AI-enabled wearables in January, claiming that they will not be treated as heavily regulated medical devices as long as they do not claim to diagnose or treat diseases.

Wearables do have some potential to have a positive change. In the best-case scenario, health insurance premiums would go down and Americans would live longer and more ailment-free lives. One NYC-based family medicine physician we spoke with said the people who bring wearable data to their appointments do tend to be the most health-conscious patients.

But do the health conscious seek out wearables, or do wearables make users more health conscious? It’s unclear. Furthermore, the data generated are not very useful or actionable for doctors or wearers — and they are often inaccurate.

Advertisement More pressingly, there is a major incentive to use consumer data to expand their profit margins. In the car industry, catchily named plans like Drivewise (Allstate), DriveEasy (Geico), and Snapshot (Progressive) extract as much data as possible from you and your car, including braking, time of day, and phone usage. Ideally, the data would be used to improve driver behavior and reduce accidents.

There are some studies that point to improvement, but these are mostly for trucking fleets, and the data need to be combined with coaching and other strategies. Instead, drivers agree to opt in for lower premiums, and insurers line their pockets selling the data to third parties. The same may happen with wearable data and health insurance.

Dump five sugars in your morning coffee, skip the afternoon workout, and somewhere in a server farm in Nebraska, a spreadsheet decides you are the kind of person who dies young. Your data could be weaponized by your insurer to increase your premium and label you risky. When we are at risk, we need help, yet insurance companies and MAHA want to make the person at constant “risk” also responsible for managing that increased risk themselves.

When a hurricane hits, when cancer strikes, when a drunk driver runs a red light, no amount of personal optimization saves you. The telematics model, whether applied to your Camry or your cardiovascular system, is not a health strategy and it is not sound policy. The insurance industry has spent decades figuring out how to avoid paying for your health.

Now, with an app and a MAHA press release, we may be handing the keys to the people who were already driving us into a ditch. Andréa Becker, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of sociology at Hunter College and the author of “Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy.” Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco for the ANSIRH research group. Paul Kamuf is an ex-creative director turned sociologist.

His graduate research centers on the impact of new technologies on workers, the workplace, and human relationships.Advertisement Letter to the editor Have an opinion on this essay? Submit a letter to the editor. Health insurance, wearables, wellness Submit a correction requestReprints Andréa Becker Paul Kamuf Newsletter The smartest thinkers in life sciences on what's happening — and what's to come Recommended First Opinion August 14, 2026 U.S., U.K.

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