HealthyWage Rewards You For Being Fit

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 15, 2009

HealthyWage is a new service that focuses on rewarding people for working on being more fit. According to the company presentation, about $2.4 trillion is spent annually on healthcare in America.

A majority of that amount goes towards chronic diseases caused by bad habits. These include obesity, diabetes, sleep disorders, stress, and smoking.

Because of this problem, HealthyWage launched at the TechCrunch50 conference. Those that return to the website daily and report specific data about their habits can earn about $1,000. When registering for the website, participants answer questions as part of a health risk assessment.

People or companies can put down a $200 bet that they will get a certain BMI within a certain span of time. The people or companies will lose that money if the individual is unable to meet that goal.

Unfortunately, the way that HealthyWage makes money is from the losers that cannot make their goals. HealthyWage would also make money by selling health history to food and drug manufacturing and retail companies. At the conference, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos said that he would use the service.