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Bill To Outlaw Genetic Discrimination In US
fatduck sends us a brief note from New Scientist about the overwhelming passage in the US House of Representatives of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. As written, the bill would prohibit insurance companies from charging higher rates, and employers from discriminating in hiring, based on the results of genetic tests. A Boston Globe editorial notes that the bill has been held up in the Senate by the action of a single senator, who has an (outdated) objection based on his anti-abortion stance. President Bush has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.
I fail to see why this is even an issue?
If Insurance Company X wants to discriminate that's fine and dandy. Big deal. Eventually some other insurance company will probably pick up the pace and find some way to offer these people insurance without outrageous prices, but what really is wrong here? It's like saying an insurance company can't charge people different rates based on sex.
It's just silly and another anti-discrimination agenda that makes people across both party lines and ideologies "feel good" about themselves when really, they're just making the economy less efficient.
the Political Inquirer
It's illegal to fire someone for trying to start a union at his place of work, but I got fired, anyway. They claimed I had quit.
Suddenly the burden of proof falls to the injured party and all the "big bad company" has to do is have some form of plausible denyability.
Big words, high ideals, changes nothing.
-Eldurbarn
(1) Who is the single senator? (whose name is apparently much more difficult to type than 'single senator')
(2) What makes his objection "outdated"? (For that matter, what *is* the objection?)
(3) What is he actually doing that's "holding up" the bill?
At least the main thrust of the article is expounded, but, geez, does this guy run around in a mask and a cape and do all his legislating at night, or why exactly did the submitter feel the need to leave his person and actions cloaked in mystery?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
While I agree with the spirit of the bill, they need to do something better. Genetic information should be restricted medical information only. More than the fact that employers and insurers should not be allowed to discriminate based on the information, they shouldn't be allowed to have or see that information at all. Preventing them from making decisions based on the information is an area frought with grey areas that it runs the risk of being highly ineffective because in spite of the fact that there are many criteria by which insurers are prohibited to descriminate, they manage to skirt the matter by descriminating based on "similar" and statistically related information... you know, like zip codes instead of ethnicity?
The only way to truly prevent the problem from occuring is to make it illegal for them to house the information entirely. There's no grey area there. They either have it or not. Their databases either contains provisions for it or not. If they have it, you shouldn't even have to ask why. They should be fined, reprimanded and shut down until the information is proven to be purged from their databases and database record formats.
If someone suggests "but it's about identity!" I'd have to remind them that the SSN is already being illegally abused for that purpose... it's more than enough.
1. We already allow insurance companies to perform complex calculations using family histories, lifestyle choices, income, living conditions etc. A whole industry is dedicated to the task of deciding as accurately as possible just who is likely to live long. I can already deduce with superb accuracy how long someone is likely to live. Conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes and hypertension can all be predicted rather well already. Genetics essentially is the icing on the cake, adding rare genetic conditions to the list of scannable factors. This is an incremental change, at best. Indeed, even with perfect genetic info, chance, will continue to play a major role. Hell, anyone can be hit by a car.
2. Perfect information about someone's future health might compromise the insurance system, but this is an institutional problem, not a moral one. (A weak analogy, I think, is webmaster vs. adblock. ) That two people, having vastly differing health prospects (one has undiagnosed Huntingtons, say) should pay similar premiums, is hardly an ethical judgment. It simply is how the industry operates now. Perhaps other ways exist? Life has existed before insurance, believe it or not. If indeed the function insurance fulfills is crucial under all situations, new ways of organizing it will emerge. We shouldn't seek to ossify technology just to protect status quo or a business model.
don't you run the risk of people getting a prognosis for some horrific and debilitating disease and suddenly wanting the gold-plated health and disability plan, which the law would say has to be issued? Like going out and buying fire insurance for your burning house?
Shouldn't an airline be allowed to deny a pilot a job based on a profile that determines he's likely to suffer seizures?
That is what's called a bona fide occupational requirement and yes, they can.
Should an insurance company have to carry and not charge extra for somebody whose genes are programmed to misfire when the applicant turns 35?
Well, the idea behind insurance is to spread risk over a large pool so when you need to pay out you have the cash; that's why gruop policies are generally cheaper than individuals. Insurance companies already do a lot of risk assessment to determine what to charge; this bill prevents them from selectively excluding people due to a possibility of an adverse outcome.
Now, they should be able to use testing results for a statistically valid sample to determine overall group risks and price accordingly; but that's what they do today.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
No, no, that's not quite how it works. The insurance companies can make money by averaging over a lot of people with coarse granularity if they choose. They could just take the average rates of whatever disasters over the whole population and charge one rate for everybody.
But they find that if they have finer granularity in their bins, they can offer differing rates to various risk groups. This works as long as the bins aren't too specific. In the limiting case, the insurance knows exactly what will happen to each an every person individually, at this point insurance ceases to be a useful tool for everyone, because everyone would be paying exactly for their own care and also something for the insurance company to run itself.
Now, the problem with finer-grained risk-bins is that given the choice between a company that averages over a diverse population with affordable rates for everyone and one which has a high degree of specificity enabling low-risk people to have much lower rates than high-risk people, the low-risk people will migrate towards the high-specificity insurance, leaving the "general" insurance to cover the high-risk people at, if it is to be profitable, much the same rate as the "high-risk" group at the high-specificity company.
e.g. the existence of high-specificity insurance companies naturally forces all other companies into a high-specificity niche.
So what is to be done?
I think that for things that you can control, like where you choose to build your house, the insurance companies should be able to use whatever granularity they care to. If people living in flood-prone areas, like giant beach-houses in florida for instance, are exposed to the true cost of living there, they might choose to live further out of the flood plane or use a more robust house design.
On the other hand, for something you cannot change, you could easily end up in a situation where you could not prepare for your "true-risk" and could not afford the insurance to cover it. Anti-discrimination laws for insurance companies is really a government enforced collusion for them to keep the maximum number of people insured.
On the other other hand, if the information exists, it can be acted upon. The genie can't really be put back in the bottle, and all indicators are that the information will/already does exist.
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