My health insurance company offered to send me a "free" smart blood pressure monitor

[stephen]

That connects to a smart phone, that connects to them.

I find that creepy.

[Sarcany]

Yes.

[Buzz]

Hello Heart?

I did that starting a few years ago.... but already had a couple of non-connected BP monitors, so I use those first to "pre-check" BP. That way they don't get too many out-of-whack readings. Hello Heart's monitor absolutely eats batteries (and you're on your own to find a wall wart for it), so it's a tossup as to pull the batts after each use to maximize battery life, or just go with the flow. If you miss the changing window, you have to re-sync the thing, so if you resign yourself to re-sync each time, pull the batts, and they'll last a long time. If you leave 'em in, you'll be lucky if they last two weeks. I use eneloops, and finally decided to just pull 'em each time, as even leaving 'em in, and carrying another set, it still needed to be re-synced a lot. A whole lot. Remembering to recharge the eneloops all the time got to be a hassle, so by pulling 'em, you only need to recharge about every 8 months.... plus then they're only tracking you for a few minutes at a time.
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[NewtonMP2100]

.....welcome to 'Big Brother' world........

[Rolando]

Yep. It's not the product, YOU are!

[Michael]

Ours sent us COVID testing kits and thermometers. We had to post our baseline temps 3 times and then if we ever had a temp, call them and a doc on call would tell us to either use the tests or not. That seemed pretty cool. Now we've had both vaccines so I assume they will be unused.

But, 2 days ago my wife got an offer for a smart scale if she'd do a diabetes pre-check online. We have a Wyze scale that we like a lot so we didn't pursue it. Our annual check ups are today so if we have problems the bloodwork done last week should show it. We found the scale offer to be a bit creepy, as well. But if we didn't have the Wyze scale I bet we would have done it.

[rz]

It's so they can raise your rates later. That's how they recover the cost of these "free" items they send you.

[MrNoBody]

rz wrote:
It's so they can raise your rates later. That's how they recover the cost of these "free" items they send you.

Just like the OBD-II 'trackers' car insurers offer for lower rates.

[Robert M]

Stephen,

Just buy your own and call ti down. I have a smart model from Omron. Just a cuff with the device attached to it. No hoses. No cables. Put it on. Test blood pressure (and heart rate). Done. Transfer to the Omron app on my phone via bluetooth. Done. Not cheap - about $65 to $80 - but it works well. Very happy with it.

Robert