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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."
Because insurance companies manage their rates based on trackable probabilities and their claims history. If an insurance company a show that those with genetic pre-dispositions for certain conditions have higher claim rates, this will become a metric for increasing prices without actually having a diagnosis for the conditions in question.
Trust me, this is not a good thing for the consumer if such data becomes a standard part of ones medical history and I SELL travel medical insurance.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Wasn't there a movie about this?
Because genetic planning, or whatever, exists it doesn't really matter whether genetic discrimination is allowed or not. It is simply the fact that genetically better people are more suited for things than genetically worse people. It's no more a matter of discrimination or not, but simply a matter of objectively looking at the attributes of each person.
In America the goal was supposed to be to protect the rights of citizens so they could live their lives as THEY see fit, not to improve their lives according to some government-defined criteria. Anyway, health care could never be a right in the same manner that for example the right to free speech is, because my right to free speech doesn't obligate anyone else to listen. My presumed right to health care would require other people to pay for it, however, which makes it a peculiar sort of right that takes from someone else in equals amounts as it gives to me.
Yeah, a study showed that obese people and smokers generally cost less in lifetime health care because the diseases killed them younger.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Sorry, but this is not the status quo. You need two look at both sides of the equation. Yes, insurance companies have never been able to discriminate based on genetic testing. However, their clients, us, will have a priori knowledge. If I know I am genetically disposed for a specific condition, I can game the system to make sure I bear as little of the cost as possible. Insurance companies either will not know about the genetic predisposition or will not be legally allowed to act on it, but I will be able to.
The more I think about it, even being a libertarian, the more I think federalized medical care is best. Either private insurers fuck us, or the government fucks us. Either I pay lots of money out of my paycheck (including a lower salary just for participating in the plan), or the government taxes me. At the end of the day we would still have a bloated, expensive system, but if the government runs it, we have better accountability.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Aw hell; I waited 2 freaking years with debilitating back pain before my HMO doctor would recommend a freaking MRI.
By then it was too late, the wear on my cartilege was irreversible, and the bones had begun to fuse. (constant pain? you bet!).
The criteria for an MRI was that I had to lose bowel or bladder function from nerve damage.
But they certainly got my monthly premium all that time.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Part of me agrees with this, but I am a father of three young children. When my kids get sick, generally an ear infection or strep throat, they all have to go to the doctor and usually my wife and I do too. Let's assume it's just my kids. By the time I pay copays for medical care and Rx's I'm out at least $75 ($25 / per). That doesn't sound like a lot, but it is to me and this can happen once a month in the winter. Add my wife and I to the mix, or one higher copay Rx and I can easily be up to $150 or more for one sickness that runs through my family.
The other thing you don't think about is how difficult it is to compare prices at different hospitals or locations (plus who wants to constantly switch doctors, it's not like grabbing toilet paper at Aldi's instead of Wal-Mart). I have no idea what things should cost and I have no idea what is required. I keep myself relatively well informed and it's still almost impossible to read the damn receipts. The ones I get from the insurance company are much better. They show what was done, how much the doc wanted to charge, and how much they allowed them to charge (the difference between those two numbers ranges from 10% to 90%, I'm not kidding).
So who is going to keep the docs honest? Consumers don't have the knowledge or the will (put a price on your life?, ok now put one on your mother-in-laws). To abandon the current system would cause at least a decade of skyrocketing prices. Then, when everything crashes and we get used to drinking a foul mixture of herbs in a dirt floor hut for medical care, things will climb back up and normalize. I would rather not see this turmoil.
FYI, I pay about $378 / month for medical and dental to cover my family. I fund a flex acount with $1300 / year which is pretty much gone now and it's not even May. So extrapolating that I would assume I have around $3000 in out of pocket expenses in a given year, this includes eye care. Family of 5 around $50k gross.
Cheap storage VM.