BMI as a measurement of my health? Skandia you /almost/ lost me as a customer with that.

I signed up for health insurance with Skandia a week or so ago and was briefed that it most likely would include a health checkup which I was more than fine with. When I got the letter for the health checkout however they referred to my BMI and it made me very angry.

I have absolutely no issue with doing a physical checkup, in fact I welcome it and consider it to be a natural thing if you want to get an insurance for your health. I would consider it stupid and unprofessional NOT to ask for one when signing up new people for insurance even.

What I take great offense over is the fact that Skandia use one of the worst tools of measurement ever to support this request: Body Mass Index, or BMI for short. This offends me greatly because it takes no consideration to what body mass you actually have.

Now I am not a thin person and with my bodyweight ending up somewhere around 113-115kg I end up with a BMI at around 34.1-34.7. This is according to BMI the same as being Obese. The recommendation for my height is 62-82kg, which is fun since my body weight was 75 when I had so little sub dermal fat that you could actually see the veins in my face. On this picture I am around 80kg and that was 20 years ago...

Considering that BMI is such a terrible measuring tool I strongly consider changing insurance company just for this simple letter telling me that because of a BMI above 30 I am requested to do a health checkup. Had they just skipped that and asked me to do it I would have happily done so.

Now I am not sure if I feel that a company that even consider using BMI for health indicators and that apparently does not require people with no muscles to do a health check? In a country where many are quite tall and where fitness is a trend it makes zero sense to use a measuring tool that clearly misrepresent tall people as fat and short people as "healthy".

Skandia, you really did not do your homework on this one and considering the bad reputation BMI have and the fact that you basically just told me, and others in the same situation, that because you are fat you need to do a health check you should seriously consider how you address this issue with your potential clients.