Bill Prohibiting Genetic Discrimination Moves Forward

An anonymous reader writes "The bill to ban genetic discrimination in employment or insurance coverage is moving forward. Is this the death knell of private insurance? I think private health insurance is pretty much incompatible with genetic testing (GT) for disease predisposition, if said testing turns out to be of any use whatsoever. The great strength of GT is that it will (as technology improves) take a lot of the uncertainty out of disease prediction. But that uncertainty is what insurance is based on. If discrimination is allowed, the person with the bad genes is out of luck because no one would insure them. However, if that isn't allowed, the companies are in trouble. If I know I'm likely to get a certain condition, I'll stock up on 'insurance' for it. The only solution I can see is single-payer universal coverage along the lines of the Canadian model, where everyone pays, and no one (insurer or patient) can game the system based on advance knowledge of the outcomes. Any other ideas? This bill has been in the works for a while."

Comments

Re:Good

[techno-vampire]

Private profit making business can not be part of this for it to really be fair to all.

Life is not fair. Deal with it.

Re:Medical 'insurance' is an extended warranty

[jmorris42]

> You seem to be under the impression that the US has the best health care in the world.

We do by every metric that matters.

In America, ambulances to not sit in the hospital parking lot for as long as hours because the ER won't accept patients. If they accepted them it would hose their waiting time stats ya see, while if they stay outside in the ambulance they aren't counted as being in line. Of course it sucks if somebody needs an ambulance during that wait..... This actually happens in the UK.

In America people do not wait months for basic services. They do in Canada... unless they have cash, then they drive to America.

Should I continue? Nah, you aren't going to give up on socialism.

Re:what?

[bluefoxlucid]

You're a retard. The proposed solution of universal coverage is analogous to stacking the deck as ace/10 and discarding it a third through. Everyone wins at 2:1 or 1.5:1, more money than goes into the pot comes out, and the house eventually collapses. To prevent collapse, the house has to take more money from [b]everyone[/b] than they'll ever win at the door, making the system fail everyone (not winners and losers, just losers).

Now apply this to health care.

Re:what?

[timmarhy]

We should start with banning crap like naturopaths. yes insurance companies actually pay these quacks.