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UK Insurance Co. Admits Using Genetic Screening
Cletusthesjyokel writes "Interesting read on how one of Britain's biggest insurance companies admitted to using unapproved genetic screening when deciding when to give coverage or not. Makes you think."
CmdrTaco performs DNA screening of a new user:
% grep FIRSTPOST dnasample
GCATTCAGFIRSTPOSTCGATAGCAGTTGCAGGCTTACG
"...sorry dude, your posts start at -1."
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When they came for the smokers to deny them coverage and raise their insurance rates, I didn't care because I did not smoke.
s/smoke/drink alcohol/g
They'll get to fast food eaters, non exercisers, non-condom users, etc. Still don't give a shit about smokers having their rights taken away?
Actually it's quite easy to get an "F" printed next to "sex" on your driver's license. You just need to shave clean, put a wig, wear some imaginative clothing, and talk one octave higher during the driving test. It may feel ackward on the spot, but you save on insurance for the rest of your life. Not that I did it or anything, but it looks like it could work. My wig investment was completely reimbursed after the fifth bill, which is nice.
I should have never given them that salesman that sperm sample.
The funny thing is that these companies are denying coverage outright... There is an actuarial fair price for *any* insurance, including long-term care for alchoholic tightrope walkers. Why didn't they just quote $5/minute insurance rates based on the increased risk for cancer-prone applicants?
Insurance companies already discriminate against males by jacking up car insurance premiums.
But you can change your sex, but you cannot change your DNA.
Err.., I mean...
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Argh.. no no no no! Americans always manage to wind me up on this point! You cannot possibly argue that free health care for all is wrong! Are you mad? What sort of civilised country turns people away from operations they need because they can't afford it? Probably the same sort of country that still kills its criminals. Private healthcare in the States is one of the main reasons why drugs cost so much - because American health insurance will pay. Your drug companies and doctors are profiteering from a system designed to perpetuate greed, and it's ruining it for the civilised world.
As for universities, it's sick the amount you have to pay to get a degree that is considered poor by the rest of the world. Its laughable that you all sit there, paying through the nose for something that should be provided for all, and dismiss any effort to get free healthcare and education as some sort of 'communist' plot. Madness.
Rant over. It just bugs me. Greatest nation on Earth? Maybe when you stop letting people die because they're too poor to afford treatment.
Extremely insightful.
An insurance company taking on the financial gain of your health and the burden of your sickness is how they continue to operate. Much like an investor choosing which companies to invest in, insurance companies need all of the information they can acquire to calculate the inherint risks in their investment.
I guess you could compare genetic test results to insider trading tips?
I live in the US, but I can't help but think the Brits are doing something right, considering their crime rate in proportion to ours.
I'd like to add that it's unfair to the companies involved if they allow individuals to take these tests.
Positive results means the individual gets to load up on life insurance and health insurance, in essense defrauding the insurance company and raising premiums for everyone. If everyone knows the facts, then everyone can agree on a contract.
There is no "sancitity of profits" as people like to keep on saying. Insurance companies do compete, and the DO go out of business, though there is probably room for improvment along the line.
Finally, insurance stats are stats you can trust. These folks make a business keeping good stats, literally. They make them as UNBAISED as possible. If gay blacks turned out to never get cancer, you can bet they'd lower their premiums to that group to attract more of them. Next time you see an activist group touting some hard to beleive numbers, take a look at a set of numbers that you can trust. These evil corporate numbers that have formed the basis of health studies for years. No if they'd get with the tech program and make coverage as simple as ording books from Amazon, THAT would be progress.
You have several good points, put in general it worries me. I believe this to be more a cultural thing, but that's the way it goes.
Firstly, when guns are potential death come into the equation I believe that everyone should know EXACTLY what the law is, otherwise someone is going to end up on a murder charge.
You mention rape, alwats a controvertial topic. here's an example. I am having an argument with my girlfriend, she starts hitting me, I raise an arm in defence and she falls. Not a good situation (especially as I shouldn't have raised an arm, but that is another issue). Or perhaps she is hysterical and I am trying to calm her down. Or perhaps she is mentally ill and isn't entirely in control of what she does.
Now what happens if she shouts out claims that I am attempting to rape her? (Note, before anyone goes crazy, I am not saying that all women do this).
To be honest, I do not want half the street pulling a gun on me.
Look at it as the difference between the police arresting someone and a citizen performing an arrest. In the UK the police can arrest upon suspicion but have to release after a certain amoutn of time if no charge is to made. A citizen can arrest if that citizen knows for a fact that a crime has taken place.
People from the US talk about their civil liberties and how it is their right to be able defend themself. I say it is my right to be able to walk down the street without the fear that a gun is going to be pulled on me. Kennesaw County sounds like my idea of Hell. I don't care if the crim ehas been reduced. I don't want to live there (and will not live there) as I would live in constant fear. Any hothead (or even undiagnosed mentally ill person - you don't really think that all mentally ill people are registered do you?) around me, if he is the head of a household, is legally required to own a weapon that can kill me.
I don't see that as "having a weapon to defend their home". I see it as "having a weapon that can be used to kill me". I believe I have a right to not spend my life thinking that way.
In my previous post, I was just trying to make the connection between lack of visible police and rising crime. I disagree with your comment that "having more police on the street acts as a deterrent to some". I would say it would be a deterrent to a lot more than some. What we have lost it Britain is the "local bobby". Your local policeman that everyone knew the name of. They just don't have a presence and without a presence the criminals are laughing. My example of Kenilworth was not to say they could have prevented anything, it was an illustration of the disastrous fall in Police numbers in the UK.
This is why the Labour government are trying desperately to raise police levels. But they may have left it far too late and the Tories are loving reminding them about it.
Here's soemthing for you to think about. The first time I ever saw a privately owned gun was in Atlanta (I work for the Swedish arm of a company based there). I had asked for a receipt after a taxi ride. The driver opened the glove compartment to get the book and he had a gun there. I was scared stiff. I froze. Now, was that my culture's fault for not preparing me for the sight of a gun? Was it the American culture's fault for requiring that the driver has a gun for protection. Or was it just two diverse cultures with very different backgrounds clashing, to such an extent that we shouldn't really compare?
Not sure about YOUR insurer, but mine wants to know how far I drive to work every day, and how many days a week I do it, and when I changed jobs and the drive went longer, my insurance went up. So, I suspect, at least SOME insurance companies already manage this specific risk...
(g, d, & rlh)
The answer? (Re-)socialise medicine. It worked fine in Australia for 20 years, and the current government is moving away from it for no reason other than ideology. The alternatives (genetically susceptible citizens having increasingly steep premiums foisted upon them, leading eventually to the non-affordability of either insurance or health care) is unacceptable in any decent modern society (except the US - or is that proviso tautological?)
Scary is right. 1984 will not be brought upon us by governments - they are, relatively, too weak. It will be brought upon us, gradually, by the corporate world.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Yeah, but think about it this way: For a century or more companies have been willing to buy the risk for diseases that will/have turned out to be genetic. Do you think that they will significantly lower prices if allowed to screen everyone's genes for all of the known genetically linked diseases? It seems clear that they probably would not. So governments will attempt to protect us from them but keeping the playing field the same.
The knowledge of risk may be changing here, but I doubt that the pricing will follow.
Perhaps governments will allow special pricing for those willing to be tested, who knowns.
Yes...I am a rocket scientist.
Something interesting about that is that although insurance companies are allowed to discriminate on the basis of gender, they are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race. It's the exact same law, yet the courts have ruled in this odd fashion.
Note that I'm suggestion that discrimination is a good thing. It seems to me they shouldn't be able to discriminate on either one.
yes , but what if you drive drunk into an airport and crash a airplane? or get some really expensive sickness?
i dont know what happens in the u.s. in this case, but if you couldnt pay in sweden you would be a burden to the taxpayers clearly.
What really bugged me is that they wouldn't tell me what they would test for. They took blood and urine samples from me and my wife, and then came back for more urine samples (on consecutive days) from me. The people sent to get the samples simply said that maybe there was some sugar or protein in the urine the first time, not to worry, it happens all the time.
my hobbies include space walks, ether chugging contests and marathon sleep contests.
If you're using a value-neutral logic like that then you shouldn't be using value-laden terms like 'fault'.
In this case the price differential is due to divergent groups who either drive more or less safely than the average road user.
But this is rediculously off topic, so I'll stop now.
I wouldn't consider feminism to be a special rights group. It's an equal rights movement.
Ok, first off, I didn't intend that comment as a slur on your intelligence, though, looking back at it it's clear that that's how it came out.
As for your second point, you seem to be suggesting that I'm guilty of discrimination by pointing out that an intelligent person would blame the people who are driving unsafely and thus driving up the price instead of those who drive safely and thus bring the overall price down. This seems somewhat flawed to me.
The comparison to work related sexual discrimination is even more flawed. The situation you describe above involves someone doubting someone's intelligence because of outward physical characteristics (gender/appearance).
The current situation however, involves someone doubting someone's intelligence because they say something which is logically flawed (that is, the assertion that women are to blame for the higher cost of insurance for men).
This is a judgement made on the basis of the behaviour of the subject, not merely on their gender (note that I would have made the same comment had you been female).
Damn. You've got me there. Yes, you're right. My assertion that the statistics pointed to the fact that women were better drivers was simplistic.
In most countries men probably drive far more than women, making them more prone to accidents.
The whole culture of "discrimination" being immoral is therefore simply a confidence game to get certain people to stop using their neurons.
Which people? Well, it would appear to be primarily those who are most susceptible to moral appeals. Now, some people might think that morality is evil because it is "unreasonable", but I don't. We are unreasonable beings... we don't reason about every breath we take, nor each beat of our hearts, nor about when to synthesize insulin to handle the extra glucose we just consumed because we got hungry without any good reason. Likewise, now that we are relying on things like fire and Linux, it makes sense that we might have certain "rules of thumb" that we can apply without rederiving the laws of physics every time we wish to apply them. We might simply "unreasonably" assume that certain formulae are adequate for engineering purposes because some authorities we trust have told us so and everyone who uses them seems to be successful.
Morality is like that.
So I don't think morality is necessarily an evil thing -- so why do we have a society that seems bent on selecting the biological capacity to be moral out of the gene pool? Who came up with this obnoxious genocidal eugenics pogrom against the biological capacity for morality, anyway?
Well, of course, there weren't any meetings of little gnomes in their hidden caves midst the sycamore trees -- but we do have a clue as to what may have evolved this governmentally supported breeding against morality:
Most of the modern morals against "discrimination" are specifically targeted against discrimination on the basis of (drum roll) GENES .
Now, how is this clue going to help us get to the bottom of this mystery?
For this, I refer you to Richard Dawkins in a most enlightneing book titled "The Extended Phenotype" and some sections specifically about genetically programmed mind control of other organisms:
"Many fascinating examples of parasites manipulating the behavior of their hosts can be given. For nematomorph larvae, who need to break out of their insect hosts and get into water where they live as adults, '...a major difficulty in the parasite's life is the return to water. It is, therefore, of particular interest that the parasite appears to affect the behavior of its host, and "encourages" it to return to water. The mechanism by which this is achieved is obscure, but there are sufficient isolated reports to certify that the parasite does influence its host, and often suicidally for the host... One of the more dramatic reports describes an infected bee flying over a pool and, when about six feet over it, diving straight into the water. Immediately on impact the gordian worm burst out and swam into the water, the maimed bee being left to die' (Croll 1966)."
"Several species of ant have no workers of their own. The queens invade nests of other species, dispose of the host queen, and use the host workers to bring up their own reproductive young. The method of disposing of the queen varies. In some species, such as the descriptively named Bothriomyrmex regicidus and B. decapitans, the parasite queen rides about on the back of the host queen and then, in Wilson's (1971) delightful description, 'begins the one act for which she is uniquely specialized: slowly cutting off the head of her victim' (p. 363)."
"Monomorium santschii achieves the same result by more subtle means. The host workers have weapons wielded by strong muscles, and nerves attached to the muscles; why should the parasite queen exert her own jaws if she can subvert the nervous systems controlling the numerous jaws of the host workers? It does not seem to be known how she achieves it, but she does: the host workers kill their own mother and adopt the usurper. A chemical secreted by the parasite queen seems the likely weapon, in which case it might be labeled a pheromone, but it is probably more illuminating to think of it as a formidably powerful drug. In line with this interpretation, Wilson (1971, p 413) writes of symphylic substances as being 'more than just elementary nutritive substances or even analogues of the natural host pheromones. Several authors have spoken of a narcotizing effect of symphylic substances.' Wilson also uses the word 'intoxicant' and quotes a case in which worker ants under the influence of such a substance become temporarily disoriented and less sure of their footing."
"Those who have never been brainwashed or addicted to a drug find it hard to understand their fellow men who are driven by such compulsions. In the same naive way we cannot understand a host bird's being compelled to feed an absurdly oversized cuckoo, or worker ants wantonly murdering the only being in the whole world that is vital to their genetic success. But such subjective feelings are misleading, even where the relatively crude achievements of human pharmacology are concerned. With natural selection working on the problem, who would be so presumptuous as to guess what feats of mind control might not be achieved?"
When we see words such as "prejudice" and "discrimination" used in morally pejorative and even medically diagnostic ways that are otherwise indistinguishable from "knowledge", "wisdom" and "discernment" -- particularly in the areas of thought about "genes" -- who would be so presumptuous as to assert no genetic interests are at work generating emotional confusion of clear headedness?
Finally, Dawkins completes this paragraph on mind control with a warning:
"Do not expect to see animals always behaving in such a way as to maximize their own inclusive fitness. Losers in an arms race may behave in some very odd ways indeed. If they appear disoriented and unsure of their footing, this may be only the beginning."
Seastead this.
What gets me is that there's an EQUAL number of males and females on the planet, but young males pay much higher rates for car insurance. Of course, they couldn't just make both genders pay the in-between amount, because feminist superiority groups, errr, women's rights groups, would get all pissy.
I know it sounds socialist, but it's not like you can help what gender you are. How would you feel if an insurance company said: ``Hmmm.. you're naturally intelligent, therefore more curious, and more likely to get into situations that others might not get into. Your fees are doubled, congratulations.''
You'd think with all the statistical tools they have at their mercy, they'd be able to figure out a fair set of average rates to make the general population pay as a whole without all the obnoxious distinctions.
Now, if all the males on the planet other than me were to suddenly all die of unknown causes, and I could prove to them my ability to drive safely, would they lower my rates? Or would they *still* not trust me?
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
"
Yeah, they drive worse, crash into things more, get involved in stupid macho shit which female drivers (on the whole) don`t do. They are just responsible for many
more claims. "
See, this is why I hate being male. Nearly every day I regret something I cannot change.
"
Men get paid more than women too. "
Which also sucks. It's another form of discrimination.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
"
I'm sorry. I didn't realise that it was my fault that you have to pay more for car insurance. I feel so guilty now...
"
Actually, I don't. I don't pay for my own car insurance; I'm lucky enough to have parents that do that for me.
"
Oh, hang on, maybe it actually has something to do with the fact that males statistically have much higher car accident rates. "
So, any suggestions on how to fix this? Or make the insurance company understand that my sister speeds regularly, and I consistently drive 5-10 mph under the speed limit? I'm actually afraid of going fast. Speed kills. (Or, more correctly, it's not the speed, it's the quick starts and stops.)
"I have an idea. How about you make a start by driving carefully and bitch at any of your male friends who drive in a reckless manner and eventually the proportion
of male car accidents might come down to match the proportion of female car accidents and then the insurance companies will have to lower their prices for men.
"
I've lost a lot of `friends' this way. They still drive fast.
"
The reason men pay more for insurance is because men tend to be unsafe drivers. If you're annoyed about the amount you have to pay why not blame all the men
out there who are driving unsafely, not the women who are driving safely."
I didn't blame the women. There's no sense in blaming all the other men just because I was born one of them; they can't help that. I'm simply blaming the insurance companies--they're the ones that control rates.
As for what I said about women's rights groups: ever hear the debate about equal rights vs. special rights? Women have been discriminated against for a helluva long time (and still are), so I definitely agree that in most scenarios they should be cut a break. But--they're being cut a break at the expense of people like me, who don't necessarily discriminate against them. Majority may rule in a democracy, but does that make the majority right?
`But the majority is only right for the majority of
people the majority of time in the majority of situations. So our so-called
"majority", perhaps being 2/3, is actually 2/3 of 2/3 of 2/3, or 8/27, which
is not a majority at all! Hence, most of the time, it doesn't apply.'
And yes, I think men's rights/superiority groups would be just as silly.
--theorangesquid, who bikes nearly everywhere...
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I wasn't blaming women, just making fun of special rights groups :)
That doesn't give you a reason to doubt what intelligence I may have. You'd be just as guilty of the employer that hires a man over a woman because they doubted the woman's intelligence, albeit provably equal to the man's.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Health insurance companies think they're in the business of maintaining health not fixing disease. Keep your health in shape and they'll cover any nuissances you have to deal with.
Get really sick and it's your fault.
They want to be like a Subway sandwich stand, when a lot of people need a soup kitchen.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
The way to solve government tyranny has been largely worked out - division of power, checks and balances - witness the US, Western Europe, etc.
Now comes the bigger fight - how to rein in corporate tyranny. How do you stop the greedy slimeballs from buying the law and screwing everyone in sight?
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
But over the years that they have been collecting these statistics there were historically many more men driving than women. These stats probably go back to the (19)50's at least, when women more or less did not drive. Perhaps the statistics are biased after all?
Um... no.
I've had two kids. (they are not 3 and 5) -- BOTH with complications. (Premature labor, and lung problems with the first, induced labor b/c of water breaking with the second) -- my son (teh first) required a 3 day stay in the NeoNatal ICU.
My total bill for each was less than 5,000 -- and I had NO insurance at the time.
IF you're going to present an arguement, get correct information, please.
Poor little no puppy toe!
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
Liability insurance isn't to protect you, it's to protect the guy you run into. Virginia and other states require you to have car insurance for this reason.
Scenario 3: you run into someone and injure him so badly that he runs up half a million in medical expenses. How the hell are you going to pay that? If you can't, you leave him holding the bag, either not getting treatment or going bankrupt from the medical bills. THAT is why liability insurance is required.
No sig? Sigh...
As for genetic screening, I think the thing that cheeses me off is that these guys find out stuff about us (ie potential risks) and don't bother to tell us. But they do tell all the other insurers.
t
But the average condition is what the current rates are based on. So if they were to find that the risks are spread evenly among everyone, the rates would probably stay about the same for most people.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
honesty-is-the-worst-policy...
I wonder exactly what you mean here, because I can see two different points of view.
The first, and I assume this is Michael's point of view, is that the insurance company was being dishonest in not telling its (potential) customers of this screening and using "unapproved" tests. Bear in mind many people use "unapproved" things all of the time, take Ginko for example.
The second point of view is the insurance company's. How do they know the person applying for coverage isn't terminally ill and will make the company pay out millions of dollars for treatment? The company has a right to know the state of their paitents before giving coverage.
Nice sig. Here's another.
If Linux were a beer it would be amazingly difficult to get the bottle open, and once you did you would realize you just wasted alot of time for no real great results.
... And you wouldn't be able to play all the drinking games with Linux beer.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Okay, putting aside the y is male not female mistake for the moment, your underlying argument is still wrong. Sex may be an expressed characteristic, but it still does nothing more than affect the PROBABLIITY that you will have an accident. The Y chromosome could be thought of as the "potential" to have more car accidents. I'm sure there are plenty of men who have none, just as there are plenty of people with genetic tendancies toward cancer that never have a problem.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
How can you have everyone uninsurable and everyone's rates going up? ;)
This
Of course they ask you if you drive. Of-course they ask you if you make long distance flights. I am on a project for an insurance companies now, and they ask you all of those questions. Different insurance companies emphasize different things but they all ask you the main points. They even ask you have you ever bein a passenger on an experimental aircraft.
You can't handle the truth.
"What gets me is that there's an EQUAL number of males and females on the planet, but young males pay much higher rates for car insurance."
Yeah, they drive worse, crash into things more, get involved in stupid macho shit which female drivers (on the whole) don`t do. They are just responsible for many more claims.
Men get paid more than women too.
Unless you are thinking that they just charge men more for the hell of it?
And while we're on the topic of car insurance, I'm just dying to know why it is mandatory in [almost] every state.
Liability auto insurance is required in almost any state to protect those who get into accidents at no fault of their own. Note that the required insurance (at least in my home state) does not cover the insured car - it covers the damage that may be caused by the insured car.
If, say, male drivers under the age of 25 are at most risk of motor accidents and have, as a group, had more motor accidents than any other group, why should other groups subsidise that?
On the other hand, if I were an under-25 male driver with a clean record I would be (and most certainly was) most peeved at having been tarred with the broad brush that seems to tar under-25 male drivers by having to pay higher insurance premiums.
The problem here, I think, is that for quite some time now insurance companies' primary responsibilities have been to their shareholders. As I understand it, there was once a time when insurance was purely a group collective activity, in which only the insured had any financial interest. That focus of responsibility has changed, any I believe that situations such as those this thread is about are a result of this change.
What I haven't figured out yet is whether this is good or bad. I suspect it isn't as simple as that.
--
Athy, athier, athiest.
they stepped over it. ignorance makes no difference to the fact that a basic human right has been violated... yet again. and i'm a conservative. try that on me and you'll wake up with a mouth full of broken teeth. then you'll have to make your sales with a broken smile. no smile, no sale. no sale, no money. no money... need i elaborate?
--------------------------------------
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
insurance companies actually commit one of the most basic fallacies associated with statistics (related to the gambler's fallacy). while one can say that a group has specific tendencies to do X, one cannot then apply the statistics of that group to an individual just because s/he fits that group's characteristics (unless, of course, it were 100% likely). in other words, the statistics of the group belong to the group and not to a member of the group.
imagine if there were a statistic showing that dogs between the ages 7 and 28 (in dog years) were statistically likely to piss on the owner's carpet if the owner didn't feed the dog before 6pm GMT. so, the C.A.T. (canine ablution taskforce) in an effort to combat these dometic dowsings has mandated that all dogs between their 1st and 4th years must wear a specially designed catheter. however, you've had fido for 3 years now and have never observed this pissy behavior. does this regulation make sense for fido?
scenario 4:
you (with your spotless driving record) pay for your stoopid state-mandated insurance, then an uninsured motorist hits you and you a)have to pay for your own repairs, or another car b)get nothing from your insurance company toward your car repair & replacement since you drive a classic car for which they categorically will not issue full coverage c)your insurance company cancels your policy since, now that you've been involved in an accident, you are an unacceptable risk.
state of florida.
Actually, in the UK, you ARE required to have insurance, if you want to own a house. You can't get a mortgage without life insurance.
evilrooster - the email of the species is deadlier than the mail -
Genetic testing has advantages for the insurance companies, true. But it has some advantages for the testee as well. They get to find out whether they have a genetic disease. This could affect, say their vigilance in self-examination, or choices about whether to have children.
But if it's materially to their disadvantage to know, then clearly they won't get tested. The analogy here, of course, is to AIDS/HIV, where if you were tested, you could be denied insurance. But if you weren't tested, you could delay treatment & lifestyle changes that could save your life. This issue is going to grow and grow as more tests are put in place.
Unfortunately, the fact that the FIRST impact of genetic testing is negative will probably put people off testing, even though it could do them good. How can we balance the risks and rewards so that people can reap the benefits of these tests?
Thoughts? Suggestions?
evilrooster - the email of the species is deadlier than the mail -
Who's your mortgage lender? My last 2 have both required life insurance, in case I kick the bucket and for some reason my house isn't enough to pay off the mortgage. And it's a standard requirement - I've never heard of one that didn't require it.
evilrooster - the email of the species is deadlier than the mail -
This is exactly what the insurance companies want to find out. If they can deny coverage to people with a high probability of becoming terminally ill while young, they can increase their profits. Basically, they want to make sure that you pay many times your coverage before anything gets paid.
"We here at Ripemoff Insurance just want to ensure that the death of a family member does not place financial burden on the surviving members. And we've always really liked fat sacks full of cash money."
"Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!"
"Would you like to stay for lunch? I think we're having MONEY!"
(sorry for the blatant Penny Arcade rip-off)
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
Two X chromosomes? Do you mean that women get charged more?
Yay, something to offset the cheaper car insurance they get!
Yet another quote "We now have discrimination down to a science."
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I miss Seaquest...
...I hate pop-quizzes.
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But who pays for the guys 1/2 million in medical expenses now? Guess what: insurance companies aren't. They are making a profit. They may payout the 1/2 million all at once and it may look like a lot of money, but in the long run they make it all back and much much more, simply because they have to, or else they would go out of business.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Ahh. I can see the wee green ones coming out from under the bridge already.
I originally misinterpreted the scope of the article, thinking that Norwich was under fire for the use of genetic testing. But, alas, not all was as it seemed. Rather they have admitted to using genetic tests that haven't completed trials. Entirely different story. In blackjack this would be called peeking at the hole card, also refered to as cheating. They improved their odds on the short run and got themselves branded for the trouble.
The flipside of the coin is those who have gotten testing done, found to their dismay some near-term uncurable malady, then turned around and signed up for a policy with somewhat less than complete disclosure on the 're-existing medical conditions' portion of the form. The most vocal opponents of genetic testing seem to think it is their Cthulhu-given right to do this. They are wrong. (I possess no humility, no IMHO for you, one year)
The insurance companies have every right to use (approved) tests to calculate the odds, it is a business. They are also obligated to tell you about said tests. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. Welcome to capitalism.
Playing the long odds at the track is NOT a good investment strategy.
Yes the companies have some justification in insuring themselves against a closure or bad business, and even people rejected could perhaps have been thankful for telling them early on that they are prone to certain fatal disease, so that they would take preventive measures or even go in for treatment, but the catch is the validity of these tests.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
I do research for a major pharma company, & last year David Baltimore (famed Nobel Prize winning geneticist & human genome project mucky-muck) came to give a speech on life in the post-genome world. Below I sum up a few of his points (which I quite agreed with) on the health care industry, the genome, and genetic diagnosis technologies. Of primary importance regarding the human genome and genetic technologies, he noted, is the prevention of its misuse by those who would seek to use it for discrimination, and at the top of the list of possible malefactors were health & life insurance companies. These are institutions designed first around making money and THEN around insuring patients receive needed care. Insuring patients' privacy rights comes even further down the line. Thus, in a crunch the health/life insurance industry will always choose to make money rather than care for a patient or insure a person's privacy. Due to this Baltimore considers the concept of a for-profit health insurance industry to be fundamentally flawed. In his summation he predicts that there will nationalized health care in this country soon in the future and that it'll be driven not by a drive for better or more affordable health care but by a need to control people's medical privacy against various, widespread attempts by the existing industry to take advantage of the tools available to discriminate. ---------- All I add to this is, what is the difference between telling someone you won't insure them because a test of their genes shows the possibility of alzheimers in their future and telling a black person you won't insure them because they have a higher prediliction to develop sickle-cell anemia? The answer for me is that there's little to no difference, and no one should be punished or forced to pay additional costs for things they cannot control. Possibly what is needed is a constitutional amendment preventing "discrimination based on genetic complement"? I don't know. What is clear, both in my mind and apparently in David Baltimore's, is that there's a need to educate ourselves and clarify our stance on these issues both socially and legally before such issues are clarified for us by insurance interests.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
A lot of people seem to think that the insurance companies won't insure 'at-risk' persons. But they HAVE to. The healthy ones won't want insurance. Oh, sure, maybe ten bucks a month just in case you get hit by a bus, but that's not enough for the insurer to make any money off you.
And if the healthy don't want insurance, then the insurers will have to cover those at risk, in order to have any customers at all. And if they only insure the at-risk, they'll price their product out of everyone's reach.
I guess I'm trying to say that genetic screening will put insurers out of business long before it make them rich (assuming, of course, that we retain the right to see the results of our screen). They exist to buy risk; if we eliminate risk and replace it with certainties, then we eliminate the need for the insurers, and they go away. Then the problem becomes a matter of finding a new method of delivering medical or death benefits to the public.
I only hope that the insurers recognize this before the fit hits the shan.
We are too soon old, and too late smart.
Reminds me of the fairly recent movie Gattaca. That movie was really frightening and I have no doubt that the situation in the movie will soon become a reality.
Remember, though, that the total number of people expected to suffer from a given ailment has not changed, although the ability to predict who will suffer is improved. Thus, any increase in Bob's insurance premium after he is diagnosed with the About-to-Keel-Over gene had better be accompanied by a reduction in everyone else's rates if you want to make any economic arguments.
The total cost of insurance for everyone can only (ethically) stay the same or go down in response to such a development, unless the disease suddenly becomes a lot more prevalent.
Note that I'm not arguing that it's right or wrong to charge everyone a little more rather than Bob a *lot* more...
I bet you won't be saying that when it's your ass and they won't pony up the cash.
Where's the beef?
The current tax structure provides direct incentives for charity by allowing donations to be tax-deductible. Sharply cutting or eliminating taxes would remove that incentive. And when someone who objects to paying a few dollars extra in premiums to cover people at risk of genetic illness implies that charity would provide sufficient coverage if only taxes were lower, he's either being naive or disingenuous.
"If it cannot understand the risk (because it's prohibited from certain actions), then it must charge more for the insurance. Guess who pays this cost? Yep, all insurance customers do."
Which of course is the point. Why have everybody pay more if we can just find those that will die within five years of cancer by their genetic makeup. Let them pay for their own bad luck.
If anyone's missing this, that would be the basis of all out genetic warfare between the genetic haves and havenots.
And if you think you have good makeup, wait till the engineered babies start apperaring, then we'll all be in the same boat.
Your genetic makeup is part of your body, which last time I checked, is covered under the right to privacy clause. After all, would you like the woman that you're asking out say:
:). I understand the point is to protect those that you could possibly injure or harm, but in a true "socialist" (yes, I said socialist, and not Communist) society, these people would automatically be helped by the Government (which is comprised of the populace), and the need for insurance companies disapears.
"I'm sorry, but I can't date you. I checked with your online medical profile and you have a small..."
Or whatever the case may be (inability to have children, etc.).
While the insurance companies do need to use standard competitive business practicies to stay in business, they are one of the most lucrative industries in America. After all, people are required by law to have car insurance! (At least in my state
However, this is all moot, as I suppose that eventually our outrage at such an act will soften, and we will again lose the freedom and privacy of our own bodies. After all, we seem to be giving up quite a large number of freedoms recently.
--Fare thee well.
WildFire
I have yet to see a post that actually deals with the seriousness of this story! The company is punishing people because of something they cannot control. It almost seems like genetic racism. If this has already started, in five years, the only people who are allowed to have jobs, drivers license, health insurance, cable t.v and access to free porn are those who have the perfect genetic sequence. I really hope a big astroid hits us before then.
It is different.. As it stands now, if you can read this article, then you *ARE* either a male or a female (well, most of us anyhow lol)..
Now, if an insurance were to refuse/jack up insurance because there is a minute probablity you may get cancer, or multiple heart attacks then that is just absurd. Just because it runs in the family DOES NOT mean you will 100% without a doubt obtain the same condition.
For me, I don't have any serious health conditions in my family (that I know of). No one in my family (blood-related) that I can recall has had cancer(save for one grandfather - died like 17 years before I was born) or heart disease, and we have a rather large family. All my other grandparents are in their 80's. I am in good health at the ripe old age of 21, yet, if an insurance company were to result to genetic testing and saw that a small, tiny trace of cancer (maybe since one of my grandfathers had it - but NO ONE else in 4 generations) then they would go nuts and jack my rates by 500% or some absurd figure. How about the "carriers" of AIDS. They will *never* develop full blown AIDS, and thus it will never pose a risk to their life, but you better believe the insurance companies will either 1) refuse insurance or 2) take 90% of the poor guys paycheck...
Genetic testing CANNOT become a reality in this regard - unless we find a way to cure *everything* at a reasonable price (yeah right).
If this *does* become the case, and insurance companies can discriminate freely, then I can predict with 100% accuracy what the new job market will be. Think how much money you could make if you only insured people that wouldn't die until they are 90-100 and you get in on the ground floor when they are in their 20's. You would be paying out ZILCH for like 70 years when you first start out. Instant millionaire.
Bleh, this is all making me sick...Sorry for ranting
I agree, I would like to know if I have something wrong with me... But it will be kinda like a credit report. Everyone can see it but you, unless you pay for it.
Unbelievable.
It would never have occurred to me that someone would -want- to browse Slashdot commentary at -1, let alone codify a technique for evaluating the "troll" phenomenon. Unless, of course, your post is a troll in and of itself, in which case I salute you.
I have better things to do with my time, such as browsing through gigs of free pr0n.
Torg, come out of the spaceship. Nothing can stop Torg.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but England's crime rate is really not better than the US. Indeed, it is worse in several categories. Furthermore, where our crime rate has shown a decline over the past twenty or so years, the crime rate in the UK has been increasing over the same period; in some categories, our higher rate has become closer to Britain's, and in other categories, Britain's rate has passed ours. (Definition: "rate" refers to crimes per 1,000 people in their population. Yes, I know the US has more crimes; that tends to happen when you have a susbstantially larger population. When comparing apples to apples, though, the truth comes out.)
Don't take my word for it, though--read the US DoJ report on the comparative crime rates between our country and theirs. This report has been scrutinized by activists on both ends of the political spectrum, and has held up to all scrutiny. For other interesting information about Britain's failing attempt at crime control, check out the World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock. Pay particularly close attention to the passage from Marvin Wolfgang.
Incidentally, Britain is considered by the UN to be the second-worst violator of human rights in Europe (Italy is the worst). They routinely violate the rights of the accused, privacy has fallen by the wayside...
...but yeah, the Brits are doing something right.
Sorry, I'll step down off my soapbox now.
"Let me tell you about Florida politicians. I make them. I make them out a whole cloth just like a tailor makes a suit. I get their name in the newspaper, I get them some publicity and get them on the ballot. Then after the election we count the votes and if they don't turn out right, we re-count them and re-count them again until they do."
--Edward G. Robinson to Humphrey Bogart, Key Largo, 1946
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
First of all, if I insinuated that crime could be traced to that one cause, I must apologize--while I believe that it is a factor, it is certainly not the whole cause. Blaming guns, either way, is like blaming computers for the actions of hackers.
That said, in answer to your question, I do trust my neighbor and/or myself with crime prevention. I do not mean to suggest that we should patrol the streets, taking responsibility for crime prevention for society at large, but that we are capable of previnting serious crimes against ourselves. For example, if somebody breaks into my house at three in the morning (example chosen because your burglary rate is quite high), do I really need to know what statute he is violating, and the exact wording, to defend myself? Similarly, if a woman is walking down the street and is attacked, does she need to know the precise legal definition of "rape" to be able to prevent one? I would say no.
Furthermore, for the police to be effective, they either have to witness the crime, or be summoned. In the case of the burglary, witnessing the crime would almost require being in the residence at the time. I don't know about you, but "a police officer in every house" strikes me as a bad idea (it would help the crime rate, but at the cost of civil rights/liberties). This leaves us to summon the police. Now I don't know about British crooks, but over here, the criminals aren't so polite as to allow you to make a phone call while they burglarize you. Matter of fact, they generally don't let you do much of anything. In the case of the rape victim, how would she summon the police? She might scream, and he might slit her throat. Crime victims generally don't have an option for contacting the police before or during the commission of a crime. That being the case, how can police prevent a crime? Yes, having more police on the street acts as a deterrent to some, but that effect is limited, and leads to a police state, something Americans tend to oppose.
Additionally, you mention the response time of your police after hours as being 20 minutes; what is it when the local officer is on duty? Ten minutes? Five? How long does it take to mug (rob on the street) somebody? Something in the neighborhood of thirty seconds. That means, in that five-minute response time, you can be mugged ten times! Many other crimes have similar time figures. When you consider the response time of police officers, their use declines from crime prevention to "cleaning up" after the fact, and attempting to bring the perpetrator to justice. Even if the perp is caught, though, the crime doesn't go away. Just because the rapist sits in a little cement box with metal bars on the window and door doesn't mean that the victim didn't have to suffer through his actions.
Last point: increased gun ownwership has been shown to lower crime rates. In 1982, Kennesaw County, Georgia, passed an ordinance requiring that every able-bodied head of household have a gun for defense of family and community. (Felons, the mentally ill, and conscientious objectors were excluded from the requirement.) In the intervening years since that law was enacted, crime in all categories has been reduced by over 80%, with murder and burglary falling more than 87%. Indeed, there have been only two murders since 1984, and both of them were stabbings. Incidentally, in the same time, their population has increased fourfold, from 5000 to 20,000. Another case in point: the state of Florida loosened its concealed-carry laws in 1988, at a time when violent crime rates increased 14% nationwide, the rate in Florida dropped 21%, and has consistently stayed lower than other states with more restrictive laws. Another locale experimenting with gun ownerhips is Virgin, Utah. Meanwhile, cities like New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC keep making it tougher to own a firearm (in fact, all three of these cities have forbidden it outright), and their crime rates are climbing. The evidence is pretty clear on this point.
Anyhow, sorry to stray so far off-topic; this subject just strikes a nerve within me. I'll step down again...
"Let me tell you about Florida politicians. I make them. I make them out a whole cloth just like a tailor makes a suit. I get their name in the newspaper, I get them some publicity and get them on the ballot. Then after the election we count the votes and if they don't turn out right, we re-count them and re-count them again until they do."
--Edward G. Robinson to Humphrey Bogart, Key Largo, 1946
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Yeah, and besides that Mousolinni made the trains run on time. One should re-read Aesop's Fables every once in a while. Especially the one of The Man, The Horse and The Wolf.
I will remark in addition that it depends on what you mean as crime. The burglary rate is really quite a bit up. Burglars are not dumb, they may be anti-social, but they are not dumb. When they know that they will not be meeting any armed resistance, they feel much more free to practice their craft.
Sex is heriditary, if your parents didn't have it chances are good you won't either.
And dying of cancer is unfair, too.
But incurances are willingly unfair, and make profits from it.
Cancer isn't willingly at all, and thus cannot be unfair, and dosn't make profit from it.
An life (or health) insurance cannot prevent you from getting cancer, but make profits either.
So the choice is to have either:
- some people dying of cancer
orJust because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
But, if you're not going to need multi-million dollar care, why buy the insurance in the first place?
I believe they are looking at only have the POTENTIAL to be expressed. Clearly, carrying a Y chromosome isn't just the "potential" to become a woman, it means you ARE a woman (well, most of the time... )...
If someone already has cancer, they're going to have a tough time getting medical insurance (right or wrong, that's the way it is and it's pretty widely accepted). The issue is, can insurance companies screen you for genetic risk factors, things that may or may not cause health problems later in life? Well, as far as I'm concerned, if they can charge you more because you smoke cigarettes and have a higher potential for lung cancer, they might as well be able to charge you more for genetic problems that give you a higher potential for some disease. And "control" has nothing to do with it... a cancer patient didn't choose to get cancer, but their health insurance is still going to be astronomical.
I worked as an insurance agant for several years, and then did underwriting for insurance after that. In both cases we were trained to discriminate.
Sure the obvious is a person that is high risk (regardless oif its health insurance or property and causualty) if you have alot of accidents, you are gonna pay alot more or be denied coverage. If you have had 3 open heart surgeries and are a diabetic, you are not gonna be a finacial burden to the millions of others paying premiums.
We used MUCH more barbaric methods of screening than something with this much scientific basis for our decisions. At least here there is an amount of science to it instead of just what someone thinks.
Razzious Domini
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
Its more complex than you make out. Insurance relies on actuarial statistics that analyze probabilities within large populations and allow the companies to add the Vegas "vig" to make money playing the odds. They compete on the quality of their stats and the amount of vig charged.
It's fair in that all the rubes (us) subsidize each other - all very socialist.
But if Vegas could spot the people who were going to win they would bar them from the game (and they do this to card counters etc already)
-->Insider knowledge (on either side) disrupts the process - If insurance companies are allowed to act on this then we create an uninsurable class and if people are allowed to load up/avoid getting insurance based on their own knowledge of test results this is also unfair.
Looks like we've opened another Pandora's box and the rules are going to have to change...
**Vanuatu or bust**
1st question: why were the insurance company(s) doing unauthorised tests for various conditions?
answer: to discern whether the tested induviduals were more susceptible to various genetically determined conditions.
This is probably morally acceptable(JUST), if the insurance company doesn't change the premiums for that person!
The tests change a probability (say 4-5% over the general population) of a particular genetic condition into a certainty. Yes or no. Could it be that paying out for the treatment of that disease is much too expensive for the insurance companies to absorb, and hence, they are removing those induviduals from being covered?
Because, by increasing the premiums, less people will be able to pay them. And those are the ones who are most in need of the funds to be treated?
On another tack, would YOU bet someone $50 against $200,000, if they are 95% certain to win the $200,000 off you? No way Jose! Neither would the insurance company!
It smells of unethical behaviour. Insurance is about probabilities. Let it remain so.
For when we reduce probabilities to certainties, we will eliminate the need for insurance at all.
Error: file.sig not found. using InaneComment.txt.
An insurance company is wrong in using genetic screening without an applicant's knowledge (even though they likely signed a waiver giving the insurance company the right to do it). With the exception of the situation outlined below: Suppose an individual has his DNA genetically screened and it is determined that that person has a significant chance of getting any of a number of fatal conditions or diseases because of genetic flaws, and then that person starts applying for life insurance because he's scared that he will die younger than he otherwise would. The situation described above is called in insurance jargon - antiselection. Insurance companies spend a lot of time and money guarding against antiselection because it increases underwriting risks beyond expectations and cuts into profitability. So forget about all this Gattaca "Brave New World" hyperbole and think about this: All an insurance company should have the right to know is what you know about yourself. The main reason for buying insurance is not to hit the jackpot but to protect you, your Estate or family from unexpected circumstances. And yes, I used to work for an insurance company - but then I grew a brain.
Uhm ,is it just me or does the punishment not fit the crime? They have to pay the people if the tests are not proven?! What is up with that? What about all those people that were lied to? What about those people that could have actually used the money that they would have gotten by paying a lower amount? They conducted genetic testing without any conesnt, whatsoever. Period. Just because it involved a drop of blood, a hair sample, or some other similarly unharmful item to be examined it doesn't make it any less of a crime. That is like saying "Its OK that you amputated that persons arm prematurely, unless its proven that it was gonna come off anyways that is."
And they will get no other compensation except the money that they have already paid the company?! Shouldn't they receive some sort of compensation because they were lied too, they were cheated, and they were unable to use money that, under normal circumstances, should have been able to access at any time they please?!
What does this say to big corporations: Break the law with unproven techniques, it'll be ok if they are proven sometime later.
When I turned 25 last year, my rate dropped $55 a month. Same thing happened with my friends when they turned 25. Yes, we're comparing anecdotal evidence, but it does show that neither of our claims can be taken alone as evidence of a trend.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
it's bigger than just a business risk factor.
Insurance stands to create such a separation
between the haves and the have-nots that it
could be a measure of the relative values of
people's lives. So if someone is insurable,
is their life more valuable than someone who
is not insurable? Suddenly the notion of equal
rights for all seems even further from the actual
case.
Does a genetic predisposition to sickle cell anemia cause one to be denied health insurance?
Why would society even begin to entertain the
argument that it is not?
Does it eventually bring our society to a level
where only the rich have the privilege of having
the resources to save their lives when the time
comes? I thought progress meant we should move
away from class separation, not straight towards
it.
I realize that luxuries like insurance are privileges not rights, but if there is an elite
class that can take healthcare for granted and
the rest that can go die in the stairwell, what
does that say about us as a civilization?
When the healthcare industry sees that it can
schedule its market based only upon the means of
those who have access to it, the poor suffer.
We've seen this with HMOs. There are enough people with the means to get healthcare that
the providers feel justified in considering "the rest" to be statistically insignificant.
That those millions of poor statistically insigificant sods don't rise together and
take control is a daily surprise for me...
One outrage after the next. There will be a
reckoning sooner or later. The huddled masses
might not have noticed any of the travesties
that raise our collective blood pressure here
on slashdot, but if they keep on, and keep on,
and keep on doing it, sooner or later it will
upset the illusion of peace that the poor and
working poor spend their pathetic miserable lives
in. Sooner or later, it will take away pay per
view wrestling. Then you'll see joe sixpack in
the trailerpark become a revolutionary hero.
Not before then, though.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
--
Here is a succinct summation of the situation: in a free market, both the producers and consumers of insurance have an incentive to try to discover information about the insured, which will give them an edge. Consumers who know they are high risk are inclined to buy insurance, and have an incentive to hide their risk factors. Insurance companies, OTOH, try to ferret out all possible information from the consumers so as to accurately assess their risk.
With high tech, the situation evolves. To the extent that uncertainty is removed, insurance is no longer viable. At the one side, there are people who are fated to have something bad happen to them. Assuming the information is known, they can never insure. On the other hand, are people that don't have anything bad in their future. They can buy insurance, but they don't need it.
Of course we are nowhere near the point of being able to predict the future for everyone, and (IMO) we never will be. Large parts of the future are subject to our free wills, and other large parts are chaotic. And so the second result of high tech (of perfectly fated lucky people) is not really a problem. So there will always be insurance, and accidents to be insured against.
Now I want to talk about the main problem: that of a genetically fated occurance. Note that this can be problematic in different three ways.
The first is simply that it is unfair. It is unfair that I should die of cancer when I am 40, while you live to be 80. This is unfair, but it is not unjust. Injustice is a product of men's action; and unless we are willing to second guess God himself, all we can say about a person fated to die young is that it is a pity. To claim that personal misfortune gives an enforceable claim to the wealth of others is simply ludicrous. (Though I note that the current PC "victimhood sweepstakes" is an attempt to enshrine this very notion.)
The other two ways that a person's fatedness can be a problem is if that information is known assymmetrically. If only the insurance companies know it, then they can use it to deny the fated and exploit the healthy. If only the customer knows it, then we have the problem of adverse selection. So it is clear that any information the companies have, they should have to inform you of. Consumers should demand no less.
But again, back to the situation of uninsurables. The "problem" here is too much information. Many, many people here are saying that such information should simply not be allowed to exist. This is to stick one's head in the sand. That sort of information may be very important to have; i.e. there are very likely genetic risks which can be mitigated if known. So the consumers, at least, will have the information; and therefore they will act on it. And then we have the problem of adverse selection.
Others are proposing socialism. Socialism does not work, but it might stave off problems for a generation or two. But the reckoning always comes, and you need only to look at eastern europe to know that doing that to your grandchildren is the way of a coward.
The free market way of handling uninsurables is simple: just let the customers and insurers alone, and they will over time, gradually work out the right solution.
Now I know that will not satisfy a lot of you, being technocrats and unwilling to let things sit without a plan. So let me just suggest what I think will happen. We need to push back the point of buying insurance contracts to a time when there is true ignorance about outcomes. In the case of some of these genetic things, that may well be before a person is even conceived. That is to say, that prospective parents would insure their children-to-be, relying on the genetic lottery of sex to randomize the outcome enough so that it is sufficiently uncertain to buy insurance.
Statistics used for ratemaking are no more than a few years old. There is no data from even the 1980s underlying today's insurance rates.
Face it, young men get in more accidents than young women and the ones they do get into cause more damage.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
- Company finds new way to cut its costs.
- Its cost/profit curve has shifted so that the company makes the most money by cutting cost a little and outselling the competition.
- If the other companies cut their costs in a similar manner, then can regain some market share.
- If not, then they continue to lose market share to the innovator.
- Eventually the innovator either faces competition as efficient, or it has a monopoly.
- It cannot raise its prices, however, because the other competitors will come back. Its monopoly profits are naturally limited by its less efficient competitors.
This process takes time, and companies can make use of this to make large profits. That's acceptable, though, because government takes time to deal with this process as well. There's no magic bullet you can fire to kill the huge profits. Only free and unhindered competition can stop excessive profits in the long run.-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Insurance spreads risk over people whose level of risk is identical, or as identical as the insurance company can make it. NOT over the largest number of people.
This is exactly what I meant when I said that "people" (more specifically, you) are confused. You want insurance to be a combination of risk dispersal and wealth redistribution. The more it does the latter, the less it can do the former. But the former serves a useful societal purpose. If you want to redistribute wealth, go ahead, get out a gun, and do it. But don't ruin the value of insurance doing it!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You are confusing wealth redistribution with risk disperal. If you do the first, you cannot do the second. And yet the second is of value to society.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Yes, you don't know as much about your risk as the insurance company knows. Other insurance companies do, though. That's why we need a free market for insurance -- so that all the excess profits get competed away.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
14 responses (as of this moment). Some of them agree, but some do not. Notice how I said that some people are confused? Those people expressed their confusion, in paragraph after paragraph. Insurance is for things you can't predict. It's for spreading risk around among groups that share equal risk. If there is some information that can be used to divide the groups further, then it should be used, because it will make the insurance more fair.
Now, as for the problem of genetic testing, you could spread that risk around by parents purchasing insurance for their child before it was born. So yes, the parents get genetically tested, however that can just tell you what risk pool you get into. You still have a risk, and if you're likely to have a child with predictably high medical bills, then perhaps you should reconsider having that child.
But really, this is only a short-term problem. Before too long, we'll be able to repair genetic damage, and prevent genetically-linked diseases. And by then, opponents of the future will be opposing *those* measures as well.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
That's all fine and dandy but the problem is that insurance is not really optional anymore. Unless you are bill gates nobody can afford a major medical procedure in the united states. Even a simple birth with no complications can can run over ten thousand dollars. Imagine the cost of a chronic disease like cancer or parkinsons.
The problem is that the person facing some debilitating disease has no way to pay for it unless they have some insurance, if the insurance will not cover them because of some genetic marker then what do they do? How do they come up a hundred thousand dollars for years of therapy and drugs?
If the sanctitiy of profits for the insurance companies are paramount how do you propose to deal with people who have a higher then normal chance of getting some disease or another? What do you do with someone who has no coverage, who can not get coverage and who is sick?
War is necrophilia.
Most people lose money on life insurance - that's the way the insurance industry works. If you know (or suspect) that you are going to be dying soon, you don't need insurance. You'd be better off planning for it yourself, by saving money, and by trying not to acquire and/or create more dependents.
MSK
Talk to an actuary sometime (I've had a few insurance professionals for customers over the years.) They're not sloppy with the statistics in the manner you describe.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Keep in mind, that insurance companies are in competition with each other, and for that reason they're constantly treading a fine line between pricing low enough to get the business, and pricing so low that they lose money when you drive your Porsche into a tree and end up quadriplegic (Cost: millions) instead of dead (cost: tens of thousands).
The rates are based on actuarial data gathered for a very long time, which show that single young men are in fact more likely to have expensive accidents than women, or older, married men. (Why? Because over the years they've been gathering the data, more men have had expensive accidents than women.) That's why our premiums are higher, guys. Deal with it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How? Outlays will stay the same. Even with genetic testing, the SAME number of people will get sick fo whatever disease. So, outlays will remain the same. Income will remain the same for the same reason.
So, genetic testing won't cause insurance companies to go insolvent as long as they don't decrease their rates.
But, it goes give them a wonderful excuse to raise the rates on those who are 'genetically inferior', to 'pay for the additional care they will need'. Care that they would have needed anyways before, care that was already covered from income paid by everyone.
So, to me, it looks more like an excuse to raise profits than anything else. Although, after the long term, it may help keep rates for healthy people low.
IMHO, I'd rather have roughly the same rates regardless of genetic heritage. It distributes the risk which is what insurance companies are supposed to do. We subsidize each other.
Troll feeding time:
I'm sorry. I didn't realise that it was my fault that you have to pay more for car insurance. I feel so guilty now...
Oh, hang on, maybe it actually has something to do with the fact that males statistically have much higher car accident rates.
I have an idea. How about you make a start by driving carefully and bitch at any of your male friends who drive in a reckless manner and eventually the proportion of male car accidents might come down to match the proportion of female car accidents and then the insurance companies will have to lower their prices for men.
The reason men pay more for insurance is because men tend to be unsafe drivers. If you're annoyed about the amount you have to pay why not blame all the men out there who are driving unsafely, not the women who are driving safely.
Ok, first off I'd better point out that I actually agree that it's unfair to make young males pay more for insurance just because as a group they have a higher chance of being involved in a serious accident.
However, the insurance companies aren't just discriminating against males because of some inherited trait that they can't change. They are doing it because of a behavioural trait of a lot of young males, that is, the tendency to drive unsafely.
Now, this situation could be changed if young males would collectively decide to drive more sensibly. Of course, that fact offers little comfort to those safe drivers who, due to their gender, get lumped in with the unsafe drivers who are driving up the price.
My point is that the above type of discrimination, while in many ways unfair, isn't really comparable to the idea of upping someone's premium because of a genetic predisposition to a disease that they can't change.
The latter has nothing to do with behaviour. It really can't be changed. The former, while it looks like genetically based discrimination, is in fact behaviourally based. It's just that the best way the insurance companies have come up with of predicting this behaviour is a genetic method. Not very fair.
The important difference is that you can actually change the amount you pay in car insurance by changing your behaviour. Granted you'll also have to encourage a lot of other people to change their behaviour. But if the behavioural statistics change then the price difference between men and women will also eventually disappear (maybe not immediately, but once people know that the proportions of accidents for males and females are equal then the insurance companies will have to modify their pricing to reflect this).
Oh, I agree totally. It's unfair that all young males should have to pay a higher rate just 'cos some of them drive unsafely.
The previous poster seemed to be blaming women for the fact that men paid more though, whereas any intelligent person can see that the fault lies with that portion of the male population which drives unsafely.
One of the items discussed is charging more for insurance for those people who possess genes that may produce serious illness (sickle cell anemia, skin cancer, etc...) It seems that to be fair, then people with positive traits (e.g. genes associated with low cholesterol or healthy hearts(don't know if these are actual genes, but bear with me) should get insurance discounts. Maybe this would ultimately decrease the insurance rates for everyone...
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
Media
Seastead this.
This is just one step further from examining your family history, or asking you for a medical exam, history..
Insurance is not some kind of a right that we all have to have at an affordable rate. If your genes say that you will probably lose your hair by the time you're 30, it makes sense that you should pay more to insure your hair!
Why is going into your genes any more invasion of privacy than other types of medical examinations? Just because it was impossible/too expensive until now?
----------
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Why hasn't somebody modded this up? Stupid moderators.
Good question. I had some mod points for this article, but I decided not to use them because I'm a "stupid moderator".
So then if the insurance company finds something, for example, you are genetically predisposed to a type of cancer, or are already showing signs of having a disease, would they have to inform you of it? Seems to me, if they didn't, and you don't treat it, because you don't know about it, and you DIE, would they be liable?
Upgrade your grey matter, cause one day it may matter
[i]What a sick, greedy bastard you are to suggest that insurance company profits are so important that people should be subjected to invasive genetic testing in an attempt to weed out those who might actually need the insurance.[/i]
To us? Hell no, they're not important. To the insurance companies? You bet your ass they are. They're justified (from a business standpoint) in doing what they're doing.
Whether it's the right thing morally is quite a different story, but when was the last time you saw a corporation being moral?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
So, in the ideal case, the company should analyze your lifestyle, your genetic makeup, everything you do, and charge exactly what you will cost them, plus some fixed percentage of profit. How wonderful! Where can I sign up!
This is *silly*. The whole point of insurance it to spreak the risk. You don't know if you have some genetic disorder, do you? Maybe your cancer risk is 5% higher than Joe Public. Well, you just don't let them in. I want to hear you repeat that when you've been refused because of some odd defect that you never heard of (or get the option of paying 300%).
Once these companies are allowed to choose who they want to give insurance to, their point disappears, they shouldn't be allowed to make a profit without a point.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I don't like the fact that companies can do genetic testing without the knowledge of the person being tested. Especially for health insurance(I know this topic is life insurance). But if more people thought about life insurance, before getting it, we wouldn't be having this problem on such a large scale.
A person who is above 60 probably shouldn't have life insurance. There is no reason too. Once a person doesn't have any dependants or no morgage to pay off they should cancel their life insurance policy. Life insurance is made to supplement income in the event of a traggic accident when people are counting on you.
I'm young, married, with no children,no morgage, and no life insurance. If anything happens to me there is no income to protect. Now, once we buy a house, I will get life insurance to cover the cost of the morgage, for me and my wife. That way if anything happens to either of us, the other still gets to keep the house and doesn't have to worry where the money is going to come from.
The same applies to children. You get life insurance to supplement income so the living spouse could still live comfortably and put the children through school.
So I wouldn't worry about genetic testing so much for life insurance purposes (what are your odds of dying under 60?) I would be worried that this will spread into the health insurance sector, then people could not get the care they need at a reasonable cost. That would be traggic.
It's true that far more accidents per year are caused by male drivers, and this is what the insurance rates are based on. -HOWEVER- This is because men, on average, spend far more time driving. When you actually do the math, you find out that women, on a per kilometer basis, have MORE accidents than men. There was a study done several years ago about this, I wish I had a link.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
The reason men pay more for insurance is because men tend to be unsafe drivers.
:-)
False. The reason is that men are far more likely to be in an accident. If you look at the statistics involved, (those for my country anyway)
1) Men are twice as likely to be in an accident as women.
2) Men drive, per year, 4-5 times the kilometres than women. (Somewhat fewer women in the workforce)
Conclusion: Men tend to be twice as safe at driving as women tend to be, per kilometre driven. Men are still, however, at a much higher risk of accident because they tend to have to spend far more time on the road, commuting, etc.
Which means that if you're a women who drives to work, you're fooling yourself if you think statistics suggest you're safer.
Note that depending on the conditions where you live, even if only slightly more men than women are in the workforce, it can translate into a noticable gender-difference of average kilometres travelled.
(I assume that other insurers questions also narrow down who is likely to spend little or lots of time on the road.)
Note also that my stats are at least 2 years out of date, possibly more.
I'm not sure that driving miles rather than kilometres helps, either
I'm curious how libertarians feel about it, as many propose abolishing community/govt healthcare in favour of private insurance, however the logical conclusion of deregulation of private health insurance would be genetically uninsurable people - people who are unable to purchase insurance at all, and thus are denied healthcare for no fault of their own, for no disease they have or are guarenteed to get.
:-)
I know some libertarians support culling the genetically weak, but I prefer to think that they don't speak for libertarianism so much as their own bigotry. (Such a person might claim that anyone who is uninsurable can pay for their own healthcare, and if don't earn enough money to do so, their contribution to society is obviously insufficient to justify their continued existance.)
But I have difficulty thinking of a highly deregulated free-market solution that does not entail this (though many such solutions appear to be more agreeable on the surface or In Theory).
The quandry - insurers sell the spreading of risk. Profit-motivated companies can enhance profits by diminishing the risk, while still maintaining the appearance of spreading it. Because they can then offer lower premiums at the expense of the people they reject, market success (consumer popularity) as well as profit margins are improved.
Or to put it in free market terms, those with insurance are being heavily subsidised by the costs to those denied it, by isolating rather than spreading the risk. No "everyone welcome" insurer could compete, dispite (and because of) the underclass market who can't buy insurance anywhere else.
Do libertarians feel that insurance should be regulated for the common good, or is there a belief that the free market can somehow make it work, or is there some other opinion? (hopefully not those almost eugenic views)
My suspicion is that I'll probably think the libertarian view on this matter is insane, but I'm hoping for a nice surprise
We are supposed to be members of a civilization, not pack animals that leave the weak to fend for themselves and die.
Made me forgive you for this:
If Linux were a beer, it would be shipped in open barrels so that anybody could piss in it before delivery.
What can I say? Thank God Linux isn't beer (it's speech, and speech can't be ruined by pissing on it)
This is where Capitalism meets the wall. What happens (and is happening all over the economy) is that Monopoly is the end of all Capitalist systems. People will argue, Russ will retort by telling me I dont understand economics, but this is what invariably happens from this point:
Few large players entrench their positions.Form Non-Competitive alliances. (ala MPAA, RIAA, BigThreeAuto).
These large players effectively raise the barrier to entry in the industry.These 'competitors' set the tone of development, control capital deployment, technological standards, prices, modes of operation, etc etc etc. They essentially become clones of one another. They then collectively hold enough power that they can prevent all challenges to their profit from the outside, be that customer dissatisfaction, government regulation, public protest et al.
One of two things happens:
What most Capitalists always fail to mention during their speeches about the purity of the capitalist competition model is this inevitable end. You only need look around you. Massive corporate bodies abound. In all sectors. They are *very* powerful and are currently altering the political, social and cultural landscape to assure their survival. The WIPO, WTO, FTAA, etc etc are all bodies which purpose is to increase the 'environment' for these parasites to live. The world needs to be a homogenous market where these corporate entities set the terms of 'the deal'.
It takes money to make money. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Money loves company.
All trite examples of what Capitalism means. In 'the end' it always comes down to a Ruling Class with all 'the power' (money, votes, and puppet governments).
As long as Capitalism exists it allows an unfettered method to create a omnipotent Ruling Class.
If the 'good' of the capitalist system is to be used (efficiency through competition, innovation through competition, etc) it MUST be tempered with responsibility, public ownership, and STRONG ANTITRUST rules. Its all about balance.
What I would propose is a massive 'splitting of the top 1000 corporate entities' (generally). The working class is empowered through public ownership of all means of production (uh oh - here comes the calls from the McCarthy-ites). And Broad Public accountability and responsibility. The 'rights' of the Corporation disappear, and individuals are held personally responsible for their actions in their work lives.
We are headed down a very dangerous path right now - Massive Business interest is rolling over anything it likes with the backing of the US Government (and Military) in the relentless pursuit of 'profit'.
The planet needs new goals. We have conquered material want. Have we corrupted our culture with want and greed - people need new goals.
Ok - Im done preaching... flamesuit(on).
Frank: Hey Bob, Company XYZ uses genetic screening to find out if you're likely to die from a disease earlier on in life. Let's go apply!
Bob: Why?
Frank: Well - if they offer to insure us, we know we aren't going to get sick, and we don't need to buy anything other than accident insurance. If they don't offer to insure us, we'll go to company ABC (they don't do screening) and sign up with them.
Bob: But won't we have problems because of a "previously known condition"?
Frank: Nah. Because screening is illegal, there's no way for us to know that we were refused because of some sort of predisposition for disease...
Bob: I get it now! And once we're insured, we'll ask our insurance company to screen us so we can take preventative action against any possible diseases. We'll get them to pay for gene therapy...
Frank: Now you're getting it!
Thats part of what makes it great. I'm not rich, and I could very well die because I can't afford a treatment I need, and I don't have health insurance. But I take responsibility for my self and my life. I don't feel like the government owes me anything, and I don't feel like I should pay for anything that I don't want to. Thats what freedom means, and if it costs me my life, or the life of someone I love, then I think its all worth it.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
But can you choose how much you want to pay for health care? No, I didn't think so. You have no choice, you pay the same thing no matter what, there is no free market, no competition, no choice.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
When the government gets involved in insurance, it destroys the competition, and hence, prices go up, the house can charge people (through taxes) as much money as it needs, and can assume any risk it wants, even if it knows its going to lose out. Inefficiency is created.
If you selected a hospital and doctor like you selected a car, rather than not being able to comparison shop because of insurance issues, the free market goes out the window. The insured also has the moral hazard in that they don't care how many times they pointlessly go to the doctor, they are not paying for it. This is especially a problem with government health insurance, where there is no co-payment.
The result? People who don't want to play the insurance gambling game are forced to, because the industry is not market driven anymore, its mostly subsidized, and prices are sky high.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Their goal is to make money by winning bets placed about someone's future. You don't like their game, you shouldn't have to play. With insurance companies letting doctors charge huge amounts, its impossible to NOT play their game. The insurance companies collectively have forced you to use one of their products.
Sure its monopolistic, but people are too stupid to see the forest for the trees on insurance issues. They want to involve the government, making things even worse.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I agree completely. Involving the government denies people the right to seek affordable health care of their choice, because government subsidies make private health care prices sky high. Same thing happened with Universities.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
It's actually NOT fair. My observations (biased because I'm a male) are that the females I know have been in more accidents than the males -- below a certain age (about 20).
I suspect that some of the studies that the insurance companies conduct don't draw lines in the right places. And also, that they are guilty of out-n-out BS sometimes. For example, I got told for 3 years that when I turned 25, I'd see a dramatic reduction in premium, seeing as how I was leaving a higher risk group. The month after I turned 25, my premium actually jumped $40 per year.
I think that genetic discrimination is largely inappropriate. Behavior based is better, because
it gives people control. There's got to be some better way of doing insurance, though...
Sometimes I think it might be cool to start a non-profit insurance company -- that is, one whose primary mission is NOT to be a profit center, but to provide good insurance. People would work there because they wanted to part of that mission...
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
This isn't totally on topic. I'm sorry. This isn't a troll though either. I hate insurance, and insurance companies. Why? Because they are mandatory, at least in the state of Virginia in the US. I know the reason they claim it's mandatory: people who didn't have insurance would get in accidents and the taxpayers would get stuck with the bill. Guess what? with insurance mandatory, EVERYONE PAYS and gee if everyone is paying the taxpayers are STILL paying the bill, except the bill is twice as big. Why does it cost more?
Very simple, consider two scenarios.
Scenario 1: you pay $100 a month in insurance. After 3 years with a perfect record you cause a horrible accident and destroy some guy's brand new $45,000 BMW and cause $2000 in damages to your beat up Ford Pinto. However, your insurance company doesn't want to get stuck with the bill so they hire a lawyer and go to court against the other guys insurance company. This does happen in real life, no corperation is going to throw out $50k if it can get that ammount reduced in court. Either it ends up paying less, and the poor guy you hit suffers, or they lose the suit and end up just wasting money on the lawyer. Not only that, but there is the money to pay the insurance adjuster. And the insurance claims rep. And the insurance office secretary. All expenses that would not exist without the insurance system as it is. In the end, you WILL pay back the $50k you lost your insurance company, unless you die first. Chances are you will pay more. A few months after the accident your premium will triple and for the next 20 years it will not go back down.
Scenario 2, no insurance. You hit a guy, total his $45k BMW and ruin your $2k piece of trash car. Ouch, you MUST pay or else the guy will sue and get the cash directly from your pay, and you will not be able to drive untill the matter is worked out. With no other option you are forced to take out a $47k loan. Luckily you had $5k in the bank, saved money you invested and earned cash on that didn't have to go torwards your insurance premiums since you don't have insurance. You end up with a 10 year loan for $42k at 10% interest. Ouch, that hurts- but do the math, you will be far better off in the end than you would be with insurance. Why? Because you only pay for the damage. You don't pay extra to pay the insurance company's lawyer, you don't pay extra to pay the insurance company employees, and you don't pay extra for the insurance companies profit.
That is why I hate insurance companies and mandatory insurance. Please feel free to let me know just how wrong I am.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
I would love to only have insurance for unpredictible things. Unfortunatly, in the state of virginia in the USA everyone has to have insurance to drive a car. You would think if you took the bare minimum insurance, just to cover the supposedly super rare events it would be pretty cheap. Not really, more like $150/month. And that is the cheapest I could find out of 6 companies. Sure, I'm 22 and a male so that raises my rate. But it makes you think. If 1 in 20, now those are pretty good odds for a "super rare" accident, if 1 in 100 cause $100k in damages once a year, the insurance company would still be way ahead. Without considering the fact that the guy causeing the accident is suddenly going to have a $400/month premium. That really doesn't seem right, that would be like a person I work with (my place of employment has around 100 employees) killing a person in a car accident every 12 months. I think it must be much more like 1/1000 per year, or even much less. From this I can see what a total rip off every insurance company is.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
So, you have the wrong genes? You're never going to own a home, either.
(this is not a
I suspect that some of the studies that the insurance companies conduct don't draw lines in the right places.
Maybe. But they have a profit incentive to draw them in the right places, because if their competitors can draw them better, the competitor will make more money. Why? With the more accurate groupings, the competitor can sell to the better-identified low-risk group for less and give the high-risk groups a choice of paying more or going elsewhere.
BTW, there are plenty of non-profit insurance companies -- they're called mutuals, in which every policyholder is a "shareholder" in the corporation. Since each policyholder's interest is in keeping his premiums down, the mutuals use the same risk analysis as the for-profit insurance companies to either discourage high-risk people from joining the mutual and raising costs, or charge them enough that the high-risk group pays for itself.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
We are supposed to be members of a civilization, not pack animals that leave the weak to fend for themselves and die.
What can I say? I'm honored.
BTW: I'm not anti-Linux. I even run it on one of my home machines. I just wish that there was some way to provide more quality control. Certain people should not be contributing to the open source effort.
What a sick, greedy bastard you are to suggest that insurance company profits are so important that people should be subjected to invasive genetic testing in an attempt to weed out those who might actually need the insurance.
Many men underestimate how hard it is to drive while wearing high-heels and stockings. It has taken me years of practice to get good at it...
We seem to be heading more and more towards a situation like that in the movie "Gattaca". Genetic have's and have not's.
Where does it end? I'm colorblind. That's a genetic condition. No doubt some insurance company could come up with a reason to not pay out on my car insurance...
Thieves, the lot of them...
Synchronized cocks!
Norwich Union: "We're sorry, sir, but we have to reject you from our insurance plan. Our genetic tests have demonstrated that you possess the following genetic tendencies: - 99% likelyhood of sitting around all day posting on slashdot, getting RSI, while drinking coffee under the misconception that "caffeine" is a principle food group, thus, getting osteoporosis, demonstrable at an accuracy of nine times out of ten. - 98% likelyhood of then staying up all NIGHT as well, reading what other people have posted, nine times out of ten. - 76% likelyhood of drinking self to death in a flury of sobs upon one's Asheron's Call 39th level Bladesmaster getting stuck in the Direlands, and losing his Peerless Atlan sword."
"Insurance cannot protect you from everything bad. It can only protect you from things which nobody can predict."
Ummm...No. Insurance exists to mitigate risk. It mitigates risk by spreading risk-associated costs among a large body of payors. That an insurance company makes a profit is a direct result of it's skill at *pricing* and *predicting* the odds of particular risks. If it were true that insurance can only protect against "unpredictable" events, then there would be no way to price it, would there? What would you pay for protection against an unknown and unpredictable risk?
"If you can predict it but the insurance company cannot...you can exploit the insurance company's ignorance. If this happens often enough, then the insurance company cannot make money, and goes out of business."
Uh-huh. And if the insurance company can predict and you cannot, then the insurance company can take advantage of your ignorance. Who goes out of business then? And who has (or would gladly pay to compile) the large statistical databases on risk categories associated with particular genetic loci? This information won't be free.
"Instead, insurance works to buy an unwanted risk from you. In order to price this risk fairly, the insurance company has to understand the risk."
Indeed. And when the "risk" no longer becomes a "risk"--but rather, a certainty--what happens then? If you, as an insurance company, know that a person will come down with alzheimer's (or any other expensive, terminal disease, for that matter), do you take on that person as a customer? Sure--but only if he/she pays as much as their disease will cost, on average. In this case, what are you selling? Snake oil.
"If it cannot understand the risk...then it must charge more for the insurance. Guess who pays this cost? Yep, all insurance customers do."
To wit, I refer you to my original point--insurance exists to mitigate risk, not eliminate it. Yes, we all pay for the fellow down the road with AIDS, or the woman in the next county with Lymphoma. But we're paying to mitigate our own risk as well--in the event that we should develop Lymphoma or AIDS, we know that we'll be helped by our neighbors' payments. The insurance companies make money from this scheme by calculating risks in aggregate, and adding on a chip for the house, so to speak.
Obviously, the better the "house" gets at calculating odds, the better their margins are going to be. But when the house *knows* of an outcome in advance, it becomes a game of "give me your money, and I'll give you a 0% chance of getting it back." This is the promise of genetic information--the house will know of the outcome in advance, and will be able to pick and choose who plays so that nobody wins. And that's just theft, in my book.
Putting all ethical judgement aside, this shows that you have a good reason to go out and buy life insurance now, before genetic screening becomes commonplace.
Even if you don't have a family yet: if you think you will have one, buy life insurance now.
Financial advisors generally recommend having 6-8 times your yearly salary. Better make that 6-8 times what you think you'll be making at the peak of your career, instead of 6-8 times what you're making now.
If you're young, in good health, and a non-smoker, term life insurance is pretty cheap. You can get half a million for a few hundred dollars a year.
And employers: you should be offering life insurance as a benefit to your employees. Offering insurance to groups is a good way for insurance companies to mitigate the problem of adverse selection.
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The only problem I see with this is that they weren't upfront about it.
There is a widespread belief that insurance companies discriminating against someone because they have a genetic predisposition to a particular disease is somehow "wrong", and I don't get WHY. Insurance companies, like any other business, can only survive if their income exceeds their outlay. The natural response for ANY business must be to focus on reducing outlay. If you're an insurance company, you do that by refusing to cover sick people. This is why we take health exams when we want to buy large life insurance policies. This is why I pay more for my insurance because I'd smoked for a few years. Health insurance is like a big money pool, and the best way to make sure that there's enough money to go around is to limit the amount of money any one person can take out of it.
And if you have somebody who is likely to develop a MAJOR problem because of a genetic problem? Well, you just don't let them in. There are high-rate programs to cover people with pre-existing conditions, and they'll have to join them like anyone else would who had a pre-existing disease. While I'm sure that some people will shout about the "unfairness" of paying more because of a genetic disorder, it must be pointed out that they will also be USING more insurance than the average healthy person. Blame nature, not the insurance company.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
I find it interesting that you equate Britain's rising crime rate a gun control problem. You seem to all-to-easily associate crime with lack of privately owned guns.
If you speak to a Brit you will find that the rising level of crime has tied in quite astoundingly with the decline in amount of police officers. Back in the good old days being a policeman was an attractive job prospect. The pay was very good and there were excellent benefits. Unfortunately it hasn't kept up with the times and being a police officer is nowhere near as attractive as it used to be. Hence falling police numbers, hence rising crime.
To give you an example. In my Parents' hometown (Kenilworth, Warwickshire) the local police station no longer has a policeman in the evening. So, if anything happens in Kenilworth the Police have to be called from nearby Leamington, about 20 mins away. I think just about any crime can be done in 20 minutes. Compare this to five years ago, where an office could be called from the local station 2 minutes away.
This is why crime is rising in Britain. Anyway, do you really think we should trust our neighbours, with the common man's dubious knowledge of the law, with crime prevention or should we trust those who are trained in the very letter of the law? That, IMHO, is the difference between a Brit and someone from the US. In Britain we see the Police as those who uphold the law. IMHO those from the US want the ability to take the law into their owns hands, which is all well and good as long as everyone knows EXACTLY what the law is.
You are, in the end, pretty confused. First of all, the human condition is that wants always exceed the ability to fulfill them. This is not necessarily bad. I want an Open Source page layout program.
Second of all, in a free market, a monopolist can only keep her monopoly by continuing to compete more efficiently than anyone else. Fail to compete, and the market will discard you like last year's pop music star.
Third, most of your complaints are due to too much government regulation, not too little. Sure, if a monopoly can use government to hinder the freedom of the market, then it's not subject to correction. And that's bad. Any free-market economist will tell you that it's bad. But the solution is not more regulation, it's less. Why? Because when you pass regulations, the regulatee inevitably has a greater interest than anyone else, and so can apply political power to affect the regulations to help them. Very, very often, corporations welcome regulation. Regulation hinders the market, and lets corporations achieve greater profits than a free market would support.
Anyway, learn more about economics and you'll see where you're wrong.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If genetic "selection" by insurance companies isn't prohibited by laws then what? Next employers will want to know if an applicant is likely to develop alcoholism (just as an example) or any diseases that might disrupt their work. So a social underclass is created (Gattaca although it's all over the discussion is too good an example not to use), parents will demand that the genome of their children is scanned prenatally, so an abortion can be induced if a child is not "up to standard" (there are already cases in which this is done). Now where will you draw the line? Cancer? Bad Eyes? Tendencies to overweight? Wrong colour of eyes?
...
Now with a very sarcastic view of it all someone might say "Well, the human race needs a healthy dose of darwinism anyway". Well, they may well live among a race of superintelligent, beautiful and healthy people (until a disease sweeps it all away since none of them was resistant to it, there are some arguments in favor of a lare genetic pool), but i prefer that planet to be elsewhere, or if it must be earth then maybe in a hundred years time. Sadly we already had some of it in not too recent past, when a monstrous regime declared part of the population as "unfit for living" and set to work towards a "superior race". Well, i'm happy to live in a world where not everybody is blonde and has blue eyes.
As abortions as consequence of "genetic defects" are already happening the question is, where the line will be drawn, and where it will be shifted after that
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Gattaca
The real fear of this isn't that they can find one or two people with a genetic defect, like many people may believe, but that they are able to find everyone with one. As it turns out, each of us carries, on average, 8 real measurable defects even though we function normally. Insurance companies are going to find out very fast if they start genetic screening (and boy do they want to!) that everyone will be uninsurable and everyone's rates will skyrocket. This won't help anyone, which is why we need privacy laws firmly in place to prevent this sort of massive screening. It's good for some things, but insurance is not one of them.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Now, you could argue that you'd still have the option of going to another company that doesn't perform these tests, but if this sort of thing gains popular acceptance there could potentially be a new form of 'genetic discrimination' taking place all over the world.
And this could extend beyond insurance to things like getting jobs, immigration, marriages... all sorts of things.
Then again, humanity's always looking for a new reason to keep one group or another down, so I guess it's really nothing new.
p.s. Hope this makes sense, it's been a long day, I'm tired and explaining thoughts is difficult...
Gev
So damn witty, they only let me use half.
This is one of the two obvious dilemmas of decoding the Genome, the other is whether a doctor has a right to screen you for, say, Huntington's Disease and then tell you you are going to go incurably mad by the time you hit 40.
The person who opined that it destroys the concept of shared risk is right on. Premiums today are based on not knowing the probability of Alzheimer's or Huntington's or even heart disease. This knowledge skews the statistics in favor of - guess who! - the insurance companies because current rates are based on zero knowledge of a person's prediliction toward these diseases. I don't see them reducing premiums.
Gattaca has been mentioned in half of the posts so far, but that movie comes close to identifying the dangers inherent in detailed knowledge of a person's makeup.
As they say in the article, the insurers are not to be trusted to police themselves, and it is now up to the government to regulate the industry here. But they already screen and presumably deny coverage to Huntington's candidates! So why shouldn't they continue to discriminate against clients?
The net result of all this may be nationalization of health care in England, America, and everywhere. This might be a good thing, as it will free up genetic research without having at least this particular ethical question.
The alternative is to have certain races pay more or less depending on their susceptibility toward a given illness. This, as has been pointed out, is discrimination on a grand scale. Whereas in the past an insurance company couldn't legally say "we can't insure you because you are a Black man", now they can say "we won't insure you because you have the gene for sickle cell anaemia."
By the way, very very soon (according to the book "Genome" - read it!) many of the capabilities revealed in Gattaca will be available. It will prove to be a revelation of "Future Shock" proportions. Bigger than the internet? Hard to say from here. But pretty damn big.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
The question is, ultimately, who should pay the expense of people with genetic diseases?
If the government bans the insurance companies from doing this, the insurance companies will pay out more to these high-risk individuals, and your insurance rates will increase to cover it.
If the government lets the insurance companies operate freely, the government will end up footing the bill through welfare (i.e. your money via taxes).
If it was a libertarian society, the government would not interfere with the insurance companies. Well to-do high-risk people would pay more in insurance, but they would be covered. Poorer high-risk individuals would not be insured, and they would eventually need charity to pay their bills if they succumb to one of these genetic diseases. In such a society, with far fewer taxes, it would be much more common to donate money to charities and community organizations. Your money.
So although I'm generalizing quite a bit, you are paying for genetic diseases no matter which route is taken. It just seems "nicer" to ban the insurance companies from discriminating like this.
I bet the same people up in arms over these genetic tests are the same ones that are fighting anything to do with genetic engineering, genetic science, etc.
Kind of ironic, since we will eventually lessen genetic diseases through genetic engineering, IMO.
-thomas
"And like that
Genetic screening has the potential to become the most effective preventitve healhcare procedure of the new century. If you can identify individuals at risk for a disease, they can be given preventitive medication and can be monitored so that treatment can begin in the earliest stages of the disease. However, if individuals refuse to take part in genetic screening because it can (and as this article shows it will) be used to deny not just insurance benifits, but possibly also to deny access to education, employment, and many other aspects of our daily lives.
World governments need to set clear and fair standards concerning the use of genetic information. First, genetic testing can not be a requirement for anything, especially insurance. Second, every individual should have to give explicit permission for each entity given access to the results of genetic testing. Finally, it should be as illegal to discriminate based on genetic testing as it is to discriminate based on visible genetic attributes such as race. Only then will I volunteer genetic information for the purpose of genetic testing or screening.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
Insurance companies have existed for ages offering coverages for tons of diseases without the ability to genetically screen applicants, and they're not going out of business. They don't need to genetically discriminate. Denying them the ability to do so wouldn't pose a competitive threat to their business model--it would simply preserve the status quo, an environment that they've adapted to and that they prosper in.
Exactly. All of us do. You don't have a one-on-one relationship with an insurer, where they bet that you personally will pay more in premiums than they pay out on your behalf. The risk is spread amongst a large pool of insured people. We all pay premiums, and our payments cover the claims of others. Sooner or later we'll be making our own claim, and others will pay for us. That's the whole point of insurance--to pool financial resources to cover present costs, while providing coverage to everyone who pays for it.
Keep this in mind: nobody is genetically perfect, and nobody is immortal. We all get sick, we all die, and many of us rack up some substantial bills in the process. Some diseases can be tested for genetically, and some can't. Who are you to insist that your premiums be lowered at the expense of others just because the insurance company hasn't figured out what's wrong with you?
I agree. You are one of them.
Insurance cannot protect you from everything bad.
Insurance cannot protect you from anything, despite the claims in some of the advertisements. Insurance (in this case, specifically life insurance) can only protect your dependants from the financial consequences of your (premature) death.
The reason insurance works is that it spreads the risk over as large a number of people as possible. To screen people for the presence of selected traits, over which they have no control, and which may or may not cause premature death, is just plain wrong. If they were screening for all causes of premature death, it might become acceptable, but it is not acceptable to charge you a higher price because you might die of breast cancer, while charging me a lower rate because I won't - despite the fact that I might be more likely to die of something else they're not screening.
You never find questions like "Do you drive a car? If so, how many kilometres per year?" or "Do you make frequent long-distance flights in economy class?"
OK, I admit that they ask if you smoke, or if you participate in dangerous sports. Maybe that's wrong too - but all those potential causes of death are under the control of the insured. If you don't like your premiums being higher, then stop doing it.
--
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Note: Read the last sentence twice because I know most of you read it wrong the first time. I didn't write if they'd ever failed an AIDS/HIV test. I mean literally, if someone had gone to the doctor worried about HIV, had a test, been given the all clear, and had subsequently tried to apply for life or health coverage, they'd be turned down.
The reasoning behind this logic? Well, anyone who'd be worried about getting AIDS must be living an at-risk lifestyle.
Oh, for the benefit of the usual trolls who post on how this just proves that, once again, the "socialist" UK has a dreadful human rights record, compared to the free market US could I point out that the type of insurance we're talking about here is pretty much a free market in the UK, regulated no more than it is in the US.
What we're seeing here is the usual self-interest run amok that keeps profits up and prices low at the expense of fundamental freedoms. In this case, at least in Britain people will get health insurance from the state, and can seriously embarrass the government, to the point of risking it being toppled in an election, if a government ever decides to refuse health coverage on the grounds of ill health. It's not perfect, but it does, in this case, guarantee privacy and fairness where it matters.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
KMSMA (WWBD?)
So my question is: is this actually legal?
... the genetic links just will make the physical/health aspects more precise.
I wouldn't be surprised if it were... insurance
companies already get to discriminate by criteria that practically no one else can: age and gender. Maybe they have race in the closet too.
I just saw Gattaca a few weeks ago for the first time. The phrase that stuck out in my head was "discrimination down to a science". The thing is, the insurance companies -- and who knows who else -- already DO have it down to a science with statistical analysis
And apparently, it's not just coming, it's already here.
--
Tweet, tweet.
I think that many people are confused about the purpose of insurance. Insurance cannot protect you from everything bad. It can only protect you from things which nobody can predict. If you can predict it but the insurance company cannot (or is prohibited by law from doing so), then you can exploit the insurance company's ignorance. If this happens often enough, then the insurance company cannot make money, and goes out of business.
Instead, insurance works to buy an unwanted risk from you. In order to price this risk fairly, the insurance company has to understand the risk. If it cannot understand the risk (because it's prohibited from certain actions), then it must charge more for the insurance. Guess who pays this cost? Yep, all insurance customers do.
Ever noticed how seldom politicians are economists? Perhaps that explains their continued enactment of uneconomic laws.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You are the one who is confused. Applying for medical insurance should not trigger a form of genetic Russian Roulette where you go in for a battery of tests and are faced with financial ruin if one comes up positive. While insurance companies need access to your existing medical records in order to write health and life insurance policies, they should be denied the option of creating new health records with additional testing.
In your world of genetic discrimination, where would you draw the line? Should infants be tested and, if found to have a gene for some devastating illness, be put into an uninsurable genetic underclass -- destined to be financially ruined? Maybe you could carry it further and deny them schooling, Medicare, and social programs (why spend tax dollars on someone who will probably die at a young age?). Perhaps employers could refuse to hire them in order to keep from training someone who will probably die soon. Should family members be forced into bankruptcy in order to pay for the medical care that their genetically-flawed family members need?
We are supposed to be members of a civilization, not pack animals that leave the weak to fend for themselves and die. If you are lucky enough to remain healthy, your insurance premiums should help someone who is not so fortunate. If given the choice of lowering your insurance premiums or of providing medical and life insurance to those less fortunate, I would choose the latter.
At the risk of being redundant, let me attempt to lay out the issue succinctly:
1. If you were to become greviously sick, you most likely could not afford to pay for your health care. The cost to you would be catastrophic.
2. Your insurance company has enough cash that it can afford to pay for you if you get sick. It maintains this state of affairs by setting everyone's premiums so that the company's aggregate expected income is at least 100% of its expected liability. Income above 100% of liability represents the insurer's profits.
3. Given a large enough pool of customers and a comparatively small rate of disease, the company can cover its liability through reasonable (i.e. non-catastrophic) premiums even if it charges everyone the same rate. In this scenario, people with low risk pay higher premiums to subsidize those with high risk. Provided the number of high-risk individuals is small, their extra risk can be spread over the entire customer pool at a minimal cost per person.
4. Alternatively, the insurer can charge higher-risk individuals higher premiums, thereby eliminating the subsidy. Without such subsidies, high-risk individuals may be charged catastrophic premiums and therefore become uninsurable.
Let us assume that the insurer has perfect knowledge of everyone's risk (i.e. the probability that they will get sick). Under what circumstances is it fair(*) to subsidize those with higher risk, rather than making them pay the cost of said risk?
Proposition: "A fair insurer asks its customer pool to subsidize those risks over which the individual has no control, while charging to the individual those risks that she assumes voluntarily." Discuss.
Proposition: "An insurance company seeking to maximize its profit in a competitive setting cannot arbitrarily raise its premiums. It will therefore take every legal measure to lower the aggregate risk of its insured pool. In particular, the company's interests favor denying or charging catastrophic premiums to high-risk individuals, regardless of whether such action is 'fair'(*)."
Discuss.
(*) where "fair" means "consistent with your favorite ethical/moral system."
For a long time, one portion of the population has been paying significantly more for car insurance due to a specific genetic characteristic. That characteristic? A Y chromosome
Where's the difference? You have no more control over your sex than you do the rest of your genome, so how is it permissible to discriminate for car and life insurance on the basis of sex, but not other genetic factors? Just because it takes some fancy testing to determine those factors doesn't change the situation one bit.
Many of the arguments one way or another over this subject miss one point completely:
Free market or no, insurance companies or no -- as long as doctors and hospitals are accessible, people WILL have health care. And the cost WILL be distributed across all levels of health and affluence. It already is.
In the United States, the people will not stand for such actions. If it gets to the point where people even perceive the risk that they might not have health insurance because of being turned down for genetic (or any other reason) - espescially if it is the 'future risk', the public will not stand for it. They will lobby the government, elect officials that promise, and do everything they can to either regulate the industry, or get the goverment to provide health care to every man, woman, and child, reguardless of their condition.
The only reason socialized medicine was fought off in the United States was because the insurance companies weren't doing a bad job, and it's at least a percieved fact that government healthcare would be inferior to private healthcare.
But if a large part of the populace had no access to affordable medical care, simply because they may develop a disease in the future - the Medical community would lose a LOT of business.
If the insurance company won't insure a guy who is a perfectly healthy and PAYING client now, who would normally go in for annual checkups, dental care, immunizations, etc - with his/her children. With genetic screening, the children won't be insured either (having inherited this defect) If this were the case, a very large amount of the populace wouldn't seek health care unless absolutely necessary.
And the medical community loses revenue in a very big way because of the reduced number of patients.
So, you would have two major forces - an even greater proportion of the populace demanding insurance reform, or government health care, and a growing number of health care companies demanding the same.
In the end, everybody WILL have health care. The difference is whether we will have responsible, self-policing insurance companies, heavily regulated and untrusted insurance companies, or the Government.
It is simply not in the insurance companies (or the people's) long-term interest to deny people based on pre-existing conditions of any kind.
Even a pure capitalist would agree it is not just to punish someone based off of conditions that were never a choice of the affected.
Only the already wealthy would try to forge an argument that would make it sound like a Good Thing TM to willfully deny health care to people - not because there is an insufficient amount of care in the area - but because of willfully denying that care because it hurts THEIR already overflowing pocketbook... And then they try to convince as many people as they can that it will take money from everybody else's pocketbook too. It simply isn't the case.
In a modern civilization, the rich will pay for the poor - whether by choice, by tax, or by gunpoint. The rich are always in the minority, and they already have all they need. It's an enevitable consequence of democracy that the voice of the people will outnumber the voice of the rich, and the voice of the people will force the rich to pay to support the poor's needs.
Scoff now - but the concept of public schools, social security, welfare, medicare... all programs that are firmly in place now - these programs would have been scoffed at as ruinous, revolutionary, and completely stoppable by the Vanderbuilts and Rockefellers of a century ago. The rich didn't have their way then, nor will they now.
We won't stand for it, and we'll get our respective governments to intervene before it does.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Maybe they have race in the closet too.
If it becomes legal to discriminate by DNA,
race most certainly WILL be part of the package.
After all, what we call race is just a few broad phenotypes associated with some genotypes.
It's well established that people of certain races are more susceptible to certain ailments. Skin cancer for whites, sickle-cell anemia for some blacks, etc....
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I'm waiting for them to use the records from your Safeway or Jewel/Osco supermarket coupon cards that track what you buy. "No coverage for you, Mr. two pounds of bacon a week! Try granola for a month and we'll talk!"