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President Bush Signs Genetic Nondiscrimination Act
artemis67 writes "This past week, President Bush signed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which would prevent health insurers and employers from discriminating against individuals on the basis of their genetic information. GINA is the first and only federal legislation that will provide protections against discrimination based on an individual's genetic information in health insurance coverage and employment settings.'"
Maybe there's hope for us mutants then.
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Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Sure you can legislate that you cant discriminate but if your employer or insurance company has access at all, they can just 'backdoor' you out the door.
( and no i didn't read it, it would be to large to wade thru on a holiday weekend )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Those ATTTACAGATTAC ers deserve to be discriminated against.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
From the article: "Just a few weeks ago, GINA received overwhelming support in both the Senate, with a unanimous vote of approval, and the House of Representatives, where the legislation was passed by a landslide vote of 414-1."
Who was the one who voted against this?
I tend to look on such legislation as likely to have the reverse effect to the one stated, because it is frequently written to provide cover, loopholes and exceptions for the powerful, well-connected industries it is supposed to govern.
And even with the best of intentions, it often has the effect of limiting an individual's rights to whatever is covered at the time, regardless of scientific and technological advances that can render such rights and protections woefully obsolete.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Gina? Please tell me it isn't administered by the VA...
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
As much as I hate the current situation in which the insurance industry has had far too much power over healthcare, this legislation was absolutely necessary for our society to continue to function in anything like a normal way as genetic information becomes more commonplace.
As for loopholes, we the public must start an intolerable outcry the moment we hear of any such pending. This needs to be an across-the-board absolute, not a political game.
An article in Nature (proprietry web) a month ago analyzed the genetic content of James Watson, the co-discoverer of the genetic code, and the 2nd of four known people to have their genomes fully sequenced. Dr. Watson had three thousand observed mutations of which 32 were in the database of genetic diseases. This included Retinitis Pigmentosa, kidney failure and other potentially devasting diseases. However, it is not known why they were not expressed in his case. This is all the more reason to keep insurance companies from canceling insurances to those who might have any sort of genetic defect.
P.S. No, they did not discover the gene for making stupid racist remarks, which forced Dr. Watson into retirement last year.
It's an unusual sentiment for me, but I must applaud President Bush for being foresighted enough to pass this legislation.
I recently attended a futorological lecture at Oxford University on the possibility of genetically engineered 'persons' (not necessary human persons). The lecture was given by Nobel prize-winner John Sulston (an important figure in the human-genome project), John Harris (a bioethics expert), and was hosted by Richard Dawkins. The panel was very much in favour of continued research into genetic modification of humans, but placed a strong emphasis on the need for legislation to prevent powerful cliques from monopolising or abusing the technology.
One important point they made is that (just about) any technology can be used to give an overwhelming opportunity to those who are free to enjoy it, but that the norms of modern Western societies ensure that most people have the potential to take advantage of the majority of science's blessings. However, we can't simply trust large corporations or other powerful institutions to equitably distribute the advantages of these technologies. Regulation is needed, and Bush is providing a good first step.
So, in summary, we must continue to research and to pursue all avenues of research, but the applications of the research need to be very carefully thought through.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
We need protection though from other forms of medical discrimination. Banning the Archaic BMI would be a good start. Limiting pre-existing conditions. Its amazing the things that will still get you disqualified. A yeast infection and even too many pimples as a kid... More needs to be done. I will take this small victory though.
I'm sure his primary reason is because there is no Consitutional authority for this sort of thing, in general.
But the reason none of them should have supported this is that the result can and will drive up the cost of health care for everyone.
If someone knows they are genetically disposed to malady "x", there is now a law which guarantees that they can get insurance coverage at the same price as someone who is at less risk. What does Congress expect them to do, not take advantage of that fact? If insurance companies can't set pricing based on full knowledge and actuarial statistics, but people can, it will increase costs.
Finally, why shouldn't people at greater risk pay more? Discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing. People discriminate all the time - employers discriminate by choosing more skilled workers over less skilled ones, consumers tend to discriminate against higher priced retailers, the President discriminates against the proles by shutting down traffic as his motocade makes it's way though a city. (Well, maybe that last one is bad discrimination).
In fact, this law discriminates against those who are at less risk for genetically identifiable diseases, by forcing them to pay higher insurance rates than they otherwise would.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
He's wrong.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
The article specifically states that the bill covers health insurance and employers. Most large employers just dump new employees onto their group policy and pre-existing conditions may or may not matter. So this sounds like it's geared towards the self insured and small employers who have to be choosy due to premiums.
But what about life insurance? If I'm a perfectly normal (seemingly healthy) person who has never been diagnosed with anything, and then I apply for life insurance and they find something in my blood, does this protect me against them not insuring me? Health Insurance is a big ticket item for an election year, but since I already have health insurance and am unlikely to ever not have a group policy I'm much more interested in banning life insurance companies from performing genetic discrimination.
"can afford to drive" and "can afford to travel" have nothing to do with each other. Americans have spent fifty years developing the idea that traveling alone is normal. It is not. Get on a damn train or bus, or carpool. 13MPG is pretty awesome if you have 12+ people in the vehicle.
the point of insurance is to share equal risk (to the extent that risks can be known). When some class of participant is allowed to tilt the odds in their favor, others lose.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
is that individuals now have reasonably priced genetic tests available to them, which they can take advantage of to tilt the odds. Insurers will now have to assume that anyone who purchases insurance for a disease for which genetic tests can show an increased risk, is in fact at increased risk of that disease. This unjustly discriminates against those at low risk for that disease, by forcing them to subsidize those at increased risk. Worst case, the coverage simply becomes unavailable, so no one benefits.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Now that discrimination is illegal on the books, one cannot use privacy concerns as a legitimate reason for withholding this information. It will now be demanded under all kinds of security concerns. In the end it will be used for the purposes of discrimination in the wink-wink-nudge-nudge manner. But hey, the Civil Rights Act ended racism, right? It didn't prolong it by another 50 years by drawing a legal distinction between races. This belief that the government can force egalitarianism is how the West is choosing fall. Oh, well. Life will go on. We are not equal other than in the eyes of the creator (if you believe in such a thing). We certainly are not equal in the eyes of the fellow human beings with whom we associate. To create a law that pretends that an untruth is true is to make all laws absurd. It undermines and thus destroys the legal system. But hey, the right-hemisphere-people rejoice. I fail to see why slashdot should join them.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This only if you were actually born. There's still extreme prejudice from on high if you're a fetus or stem cell.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
If an insurance company provides free screening for a group that's at risk for a given disease (think Africans and sickle cell anemia), do they have to provide it for everyone? What about conditions that are more common in women than men? Does this law mean that insurance companies have to pay for yearly pap smears for men as long as they pay it for women, even though men don't have a cervix? After all, having a cervix or not is a determined by genes.
But if the fact that she's a dog is what prevents her from doing either of those two, doesn't that mean that those are discriminating against her genetically? (I see my original post has been modded troll - It wasn't how I intended it, but fair enough. I'm just using this as an extreme example. There are many more subtle yet real world examples, it just makes it a bit clearer this way)
-- All your booze are belong to us.
We hate asshats like him too, if that is any consolation.
I just finished teaching a bioethics course at Harvard College and we studied this topic in detail; it was one of the questions on the final exam. I am convinced that this is a well-intentioned but bad law.
The problem with this law is that it creates adverse selection in health insurance. Health insurers won't be able to get genetic info on the people they're covering, but the people themselves will. That creates asymmetric information, and is ripe for abuse. Think about it: if I get my DNA sequenced and find out that I'm a walking health hazard, then I'll buy the most comprehensive policy out there. If I find out I'm genetically clear, I scale down my coverage, or drop it completely. Meanwhile, the insurer can't adjust my premium to accurately reflect my risk. The result: only genetically unhealthy (and risk-averse) people will buy into health insurance pools, or the genetically health will only buy insurance for physical accidents. And when the insurance pools are small, and the insurers can't accurately price risk, they pools collapse: nobody gets health insurance.
Of course, the obvious alternative--let both buyers and sellers of health insurance use DNA analysis to accurately price risk--is unpalatable because people will suffer from higher premiums through no fault of their own (i.e. because they have bad genes), and people will benefit through no effort of their own (i.e. because they have good genes). This concern (coupled with privacy concerns) is why GINA passed overwhelmingly, and I don't mean to diminish it.
Insurance works best when the risks aren't ascertainable in an individual case but are ascertainable in the aggregate. DNA sequencing really threatens the concept of health insurance, because it greatly decreases the uncertainty surrounding an individual's health future. The best way to keep insurance alive is to insure before it is possible to determine a person's health risk. Now, you could do that by banning DNA testing for individuals unless they are willing to permanently waive their ability to buy or modify their health insurance policies, but DNA testing is so cheap that the ban will be hard to enforce, and a permanent waiver seems rather harsh. You could require people to buy insurance for their kids before conception, but that has the same problem that the kid will be stuck with the same health insurance for ever (and that there might not be a kid in sad circumstances)
The ultimate, fool-proof solution: social gene insurance. Essentially, when any private insurer wants to charge you more than the base rate because of your genes, you just pay the base rate and society picks up the difference. The gene insurance would be funded through taxes, much like social security is now, though none of that "lockbox" BS. Socialized health insurance would work, too, being a superset of social gene insurance. The idea behind social insurance schemes is that they in effect force citizens to buy in before anyone has any knowledge of their genetic risk, making it a sound insurance product. And the solution works from the view of liberal theories of justice, e.g. Rawls, because it is essentially a redistribution of social resources from those who happen to be born with (and hence do not deserve) such resources to those who happen to be dealt a bad hand, through no fault of their own.
Just pass a law that says health insurance companies can't discriminate for any reason. There has to be a community rate for health insurance (like there was 50 years ago.)
Then we can say just mandate that everyone has to carry individual coverage so we solve the uninsured problem. Plus we would insure that the young and healthy were in the pool - thus keeping the overall rates down.
Of course it would be a lot easier to deduct it from people's paychecks rather than have a whole system whereby we monitor citizen's compliance with the law. So it would just be an amount deducted from your pay.
And we would need to make it something people who were poor could afford, so there would be subsidies so that the poor paid less... and the wealthy paid proportionately more. So it would be a progressive deduction from your taxes.
Plus we could save a LOT if in addition to providing preventative care instead of what we do (ER care as a last ditch effort when diseases are harder and more costly to treat) we got rid if the thousands of insurance providers and just had one large provider. I know as a physician I spend a lot of money on hiring people just to fill out insurance forms for me. If there was one form that was consistent, I would be able to provide care a lot more economically. And if everyone was in the same system, we would have better assurance that the care would be reasonable since the people with the most power would also have to have that same insurance... no way to make what the poor get be shoddy. So we would just cover everyone under one large pool.
And then.... well we'd have the most humane and cost effective system possible: a single payer national health service funded by an income tax spread fairly on the population. Or as the nutters refer to: socialized medicine.
Gasp!
TOBACCO ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE. Results of tobacco addiction, like emphysema, lung cancer, THOSE are diseases. Addiction is a precursor, and nothing more.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You might consider the following question:
How much is $4/gal a price increase, and how much is it a devaluation of the dollar?
I think it's pretty clear that it's largely a devaluation of the dollar.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The article you reference is about a proposed ban on hiring smokers for government jobs in Sarasota county. It is indeed a colossally dumb idea as proposed because it is not practical to enforce and the benefits of fewer sick days taken or lower claims is considerably smaller than the lost opportunities to hire the most qualified people. However I am firmly in support of the ability to "discriminate against smokers".
In fact, it is (rightly) common practice amongst medical and home insurance providers already to charge extra premiums to policy holders who smoke, and to deny coverage/claims to those who falsely declare themselves non-smokers in cases where smoking is at the root cause of the claim. That is the way it should be, and there should be no law preventing individuals or institutions from continuing the practice.
It is not inconsistent to support something like GINA and also support the freedom to discriminate in favour of non-smokers because the latter is a lifestyle choice, and the former, GINA, in my opinion is at its heart an update of laws against racial discrimination.
People aren't born with cigarettes in their mouths, and not only are we not forced to smoke, we have been told for decades that smoking is an unhealthy lifestyle choice that's best not even started. I cannot comprehend why anyone in this day and age would want to start up a smoking habit knowing what a totally stupid idea it is. Smokers deserve to pay more for (or be denied) insurance and pay a large "stupid tax" on tobacco. I think it is their right to be stupid and do stupid things, but I also believe that those who exercise their right to do stupid, destructive things should bear the full responsibility to cover the costs incurred.
Conversely, in this day and age, we know a lot about genetics to predict, to some degree of accuracy, if we are pre-disposed to health issues, yet we are quite far from being able to reliably create genetically perfect beings yet. In short, it is impossible for us to make any significant choices in our genetic makeup. In that respect discrimination based on genetic markers is on par with discrimination based on gender or race, so GINA is right in line with the spirit of the US constitution.
The point of insurance is that you pay to get rid of your own risk. (Well, not to get rid of it entirely, but to get rid of the major consequence of something bad happening: having to pay a lot of money). If your risk is higher, you need to pay more. If your risk is lower, you get to pay less.
Consider extending your analogy. People with a lot of car accidents pay more for insurance. People with a clean record pay less. What would you think of a proposal that would make everyone pay the same amount for auto insurance? I'd think it would be pretty ridiculous, and I think you should too. And while one might moralize that people can't help their health so much as their driving habits, that's not the issue of an insurance company, Health or otherwise.
The problem is people who want some level of socialism and try to get it through insurance regulation and end up losing the free-market benefits while not even gaining much as a result. If you want other people to pay for your health care (and that of everyone else) stop beating around the bush and wagging your fingers at the insurance companies and admit you want socialized medicine. Then we can at least address it on its own terms.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Injecting, inhaling, coating yourself in, and/or swallowing something that makes you addicted to a substance does not constitute a disease. I believe, though I don't really care enough to look (for fear I'm probably wrong anyway), that the AMA called the addiction itself a disease, simply because being deprived of the addictive substance affects your body adversely.
Aside from that (and this is a stretch, but people with shiny hatwear will appreciate it), the FDA will not allow the sale of patches, pills or other methods to curb smoking habits as medical devices unless they can be used to cure a disease. It's the same thing that Kevin Trudeau guy got in trouble for. Only medicines can cure diseases, and only the FDA can approve medicines. So, unless it's a disease, these things cannot be marketed as cures, and the only way they can be marketed as cures is if the FDA approves them as medicines. How much money do you think is wrapped up in stop-smoking products?
An addiction to masturbation is quite the same way. As I'm sure many people here can attest to, without "getting the poison out," a person can be caused pain, become irritable, lose sleep, perform poorly at work or sports, can acquire jitters or shakes, and various other things that would be the same for a person who hasn't puffed on their death stick. Does that mean that I should get a fifteen minute spank break every two hours at work?
Cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, MMOs, and many many other things that are considered addictions are not. They are merely a weakness of character. If they are actually addictions, then I should get my UFC tickets to be covered by my insurance, because I'm certainly ADDICTED to that.
it is
Will wash cars for karma
This also means we need to start planning our cities and communities around mass transit instead of driving, which means mixed use zoning to create pedestrian-friendly core destinations instead of decentralized urban/suburban grid sprawl. Mass transit doesn't work in a decentralized population.
In other words, we literally need to plan our communities to look more European. Any help convincing Americans to do that is much appreciated.
Oh noes! $4/gallon gas and it's teh liberals! As if electing a bunch of Texas oilmen really got us anywhere.
Check those that apply:
( )Are they in a wheel chair
( )Do they need assistance in walking
( )Specific diet or allergies
( )Overweight or Underweight
( )Visible deformaties
( )Near sighted or far Sighted
( )Visible tremors or ticks
( )Extremely tall or short
( )Skin colouration
( )Visible melanomas
Of course it won't show up a genetic predisposition to cancer etc, but it will really narrow down a huge list of things. This is already what your insurers are looking for. Hell you don't even need to be a doctor to identify the presence of these symptoms.
The problem with your for profit health care is these companies have a fudiciary responsibility to thier shareholders to turn a profit. They are denying you insurance for the same reason the bank is denying you a mortgage.
In a capitalist system, where a company is trying to make money, shouldn't they be able to decide who they hire? I mean if it costs more to put in wheel chair access than a potential employee will bring in, should they have to? If the company is offering health care as a benefit, should they risk the potentially crippling costs to support a disease ridden staff?
Here in the US, I think life is seen as the moment Jesus strikes his magical staff and says it is so, or at least, that's what they tell us. With each medical advance, it is apparently discovered he does this earlier and earlier in the process.
The dollar has actually remained fairly stable versus the Euro and Pound over the past few months. It was a lot weaker back in October/November of last year.
The dolar's been growing weaker for quite some time, and the American public only caught on to the fact once gas prices started skyrocketing. Yes, the weak dollar is playing a factor, but it's certainly not causing the massive spike in the price of crude that we're currently seeing.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Pretty clear?! Oil has gone up from 100$ to 130$ in the last month or two. Thats thirty percent. The dollar has not lost thirty percent of its value in the last few months.
Heck, city design doesn't have to look that European, just look to the metro-regions that were well established before 1900. The layout/density of them makes public transportation workable, and some of them were smart enough to keep commuter rail despite the federal highway system that came in post WWII. It's the post WWII cul-de-sac sprawl type B.S. infrastructure with miles between types of zoning thats not really economically sensible in regards to increasing energy costs. (And the misguided cold war idea that spreading the population out might make MAD more survivable didn't help any either.) It's not that it's always good to mix up zoning, but rather they should be within reasonable walking distance or connected by established mass transit.
This might be too late to be noticed by anyone, but I have a friend who's father is a medical doctor. We got in a debate one day over the term 'Disease'. Apparently, there is the sense of the word that I was using to indicate a viral organisim that is passed from host to host (a literal disease), and there is the version of the word that he picked up from his father, an agent of discomfort (a figurative dis-ease.)
While I don't think it makes sense to classify any sort of physical ailment as a 'dis-ease', that is apparently the deffinition that some/many/all medical personel use.
IANAD, but are there any other Doctors out there that can shed more light on this?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
It doesn't work WELL for EVERYONE in a decentralized population, but there always are several routes that cover majority of population and are therefore lucrative for transport providers. After all, each society starts as more or less decentralized population, then it shows that some points in the grid are more attractive because of some natural or traffic (trade) advantage, then those attractive points get their population amassed, then the regular transportation service routes are established between them, etc.
Besides, you don't have to switch entirely to mass transit, all the way, door to door. Shopping malls are located strategically to serve several suburbs. Those are natural choices for potential mass transit stops, already equipped with enough parking places for commuters to leave their cars and catch bus or train or whatever.
IMHO, Suburbians just need to have a poll about if they would or would not use mass transit if it was available, because if there is interest in it, it certainly is doable.
Adding mass transit connection would further promote malls into society hubs. Next thing to cut expenses and pollution down would be to add to these society hubs/shopping malls rent-a-offices and fat data pipes. Then everyone could telework in Whichever Company, inc. from their nearest local services hub (formerly: shopping mall) office, without being stigmatized by co-workers as an outsider, pajama-employee, and without being distracted by own family members/home occupants.