Health Insurers Are Using Your Online Shopping Cart and Zip Code to Determine Your Rates

Insurers and data brokers are predicting your health costs based on data about things like race, marital status, how much TV you watch, whether you pay your bills on time or even buy plus-size clothing.Scanrail/Getty Images This story was originally co-published by ProPublica and NPR. But dig deeper and the implications of what they're selling might give many patients pause: A future in which everything you do--the things you buy, the food you eat, the time you spend watching TV--may help determine how much you pay for health insurance. With little public scrutiny, the health insurance industry has joined forces with data brokers to vacuum up personal details about hundreds of millions of Americans, including, odds are, many readers of this story. The companies are tracking your race, education level, TV habits, marital status, net worth. Then they feed this information into complicated computer algorithms that spit out predictions about how much your health care could cost them. Are you a woman who recently changed your name? You could be newly married and have a pricey pregnancy pending. Or maybe you're stressed and anxious from a recent divorce.