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New Bill Would Allow Employers To Demand Genetic Testing From Workers (businessinsider.com)
capedgirardeau quotes a report from Business Insider: A little-noticed bill moving through the U.S. Congress would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employers see that genetic and other health information. Giving employers such power is now prohibited by U.S. law, including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic tests are part of a "workplace wellness" program. The bill, HR 1313, was approved by a House committee on Wednesday, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed. The 2008 genetic law prohibits a group health plan -- the kind employers have -- from asking, let alone requiring, someone to undergo a genetic test. It also prohibits that specifically for "underwriting purposes," which is where wellness programs come in. "Underwriting purposes" includes basing insurance deductibles, rebates, rewards, or other financial incentives on completing a health risk assessment or health screenings. In addition, any genetic information can be provided to the employer only in a de-identified, aggregated form, rather than in a way that reveals which individual has which genetic profile. There is a big exception, however: As long as employers make providing genetic information "voluntary," they can ask employees for it. Under the House bill, none of the protections for health and genetic information provided by GINA or the disabilities law would apply to workplace wellness programs as long as they complied with the ACA's very limited requirements for the programs. As a result, employers could demand that employees undergo genetic testing and health screenings.
Freedom.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Slightly less than it's worth.
That's the point. Employers get to legally discriminate against potential and actual employees who have a genetic disadvantage in order to save money on insurance premiums.
Fine, but at least my chosen party didn't just VOTE TO LET YOUR EMPLOYER FORCE YOU TO TAKE A GENETIC TEST SO YOU CAN BE DISCRIMINATED BASED ON THE GENES THAT MAKE YOU YOU.
I mean, fucking Christ man.
And yes, slashdot. I know it's like yelling. That's because I'm yelling here. It'd be nice if we weren't still stuck with the same terrible filters Rob wrote two decades ago, but I guess we're not.
Ahh, blaming an enemy for his opponent's practices. If only the French were strong enough to defeat the Nazis, then we'd never have had world war II, so therefore France should pay for all of Germany's reparations. And then opposing a nutbag of conspiracy theories makes one partisan, which somehow ruins a republic, so you need to be partisan for my side so we're not partisan and lacking in integrity and somehow all of the problems in today's society will fix themselves without my dedicating an iota of thought.I love the acrobatic logic, truly.
Now, hmm. A moron of a president who doesn't know the first thing about politics, a chamber with a brand of conservatives dedicated to opposing the moderates in their own party, widespread differences in view with no interest in attempting any sort of reconciliation, occupying a number of incredibly unpopular views while making promises they know they can't keep, having lost the culture war 20 years ago and losing more each day, having virtually no sway with all of the increasing voter demographics, and being hopelessly out of touch with their own voters on topics such as healthcare, and uh, yeah. I am hugely afraid of all the stupid and damaging legislation that could be passed in the next 4 years. I am not at all worried they'll stay in power after that at the rate they're going, and if they keep shooting themselves in the foot by making policies that hurt their own voters the most, that might not even take four years.
The bigger question I have for you is, what about them makes you want to support them?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
8 years ago, the Democrats held the Presidency, both Houses and 57% of governorships. Yet here we are.
This is part of the normal political pendulum. People become disillusioned with whatever party is in power because problems aren't being solved. So they vote the other guys in, and then slowly realize that the other party doesn't have any solutions either.
The ACA was a tax based on the belief that everybody has a right to life. Thanks to your higher premiums, I was able to get free coverage after so many years without insurance. Thank you for involuntarily saving my life. Sorry you had to drive a slightly worse car because of it.
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So, you response to someone who is telling the truth is to wish they were dead so you don't have to grapple with the fact your preferred politician is a corrupt liar? Which part was the lie ... the part where the entire Clinton apparatus stonewalled and foot-dragged on FOIA requests for years? The part where she and her husband raked in millions of dollars selling influence while she was in office? I know, it's painful if you were rooting for her, and you know that she was looking you in the eye and lying - over and over and over again - so you're trying to wish it away. But why the venom aimed at the people who simply point that out? What are you, 12?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So they're a felony for Pence then, is what you're saying.
No. Because the two situations aren't even remotely comparable. Which you know.
President Trump communicates about governance related issues using his unsecured Android phone.
Citation based on something other than a whiny liberal fake news blog, please.
The whole email affair was a mountain made out of a mole hill
No, it was an example of one of the most senior people in the federal government deliberately conducting official business on a poorly secured internet-connected mail server she kept in her house. And then failing to turn over all of that data on the day she left office, as required by law. And deleting thousands of federal records while under subpoena, and then repeatedly lying about the entire process for months on end, as pointed out by the FBI director in specific terms. Any other federal employee would lose their job. Nobody conducting themselves in that way with classified material could EVER get or keep a security clearance. Nobody doing those things could secure a federal job in the first place, let alone in connection to more handling of sensitive information.
someone who wants f*cking corporations to have the right to demand genetic testing of employees
Really. Who would that be? Are you referring to people in the legislature, where that is being talked about but hasn't even faced reconciliation or voting of any kind? Or are you referring to the president, who has said exactly zero on the matter at all?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So, what you're saying is that you have no understanding, whatsoever, about the things you're ranting about. You are so upset that your designated queen who you wanted to see back in power where she and her husband could continue to enrich themselves at the public trough ... lost the election because she called millions of women deplorable racists, and exhibited so much contempt for voters outside of her comfortable couple of large coastal zones that she couldn't even trouble herself to set FOOT in places that she was later shocked, SHOCKED! to find didn't vote for her. Yeah, that was all Republican scheming! The convinced her to run her official State business off an internet-facing server in her house, destroy tens of thousands of records while under subpoena, fail to produce documents - even years later - that she was obligated to hand over on the day she left office, and then lie repeatedly about ALL of that ... yes! It was the crafty Republicans that talked her into doing all of that with their special mind control rays. You should be safe from that, of course, with your special hat on.
... inbred, shitstains, etc., while actively ignoring the fact that you supported a corrupt, serial liar who did things like deploy people paid with your tax dollars to go out and smear the reputations of the women her predatory husband abused... never mind. You know all of that. Your childish ad homimem is a perfect measure of how much you know it - because that's all you've got. Otherwise, you'd have to address the substance of the matters, and anything you'd say in that area would be too funny, and you know it. So, keep it up! Especially through 2018's elections. Thanks! It really helps.
Please, though. Carry on. Do as much ranting like this as you possibly can for the next year and a half, so the Democrats can lose even more of their dwindling minority of seats in the legislature. Thanks for your hard work to that end. Your entire bearing on the matter is exactly why liberals lost a thousand legislative seats under Obama, most of the governorships, both houses of congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court. Hillary Clinton lost because she was blindly wishing all of that away, and then demanding that people she falsely called irredeemable racists and homophobes vote for her anyway, because of her genitals. You need to get over your complete lack of understanding about what happened - not just in November, but for the last eight years. Hilarious that you talk about things like "exploding deficits" (as Obama added more debt to your tab than every other president in history COMBINED).
Your juvenile need to call people
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Not everybody is as rational as you. If you bought the propaganda hook, line and sinker then you're emotionally invested and the current government can do nothing wrong.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Standardized testing and exams should have filtered most by merit before university over the past decades.
no. Standardized testing just isn't that good. It correlates well with success in America, because y'all so obsessed with it that you make good performance a requirement for success, so it becomes self fulfilling.
The problem is educators keep wanting
Nope. That's the domain of politicians and whoever they stuff into the upper echelons of the relevant organisations. Actual teachers seem to despise the testing obsession since it's stressful for everyone, and a pointless waste of time.
Most of the smart nations mix in a bit of an IQ test with their standardized testing and just never have to face such issues.
That's just gibberish. IQ tests are not a panacea which actually do anything at all. The only thing they reliably predict is performance on IQ tests. They're also poorly correlated with success because they don't test anything particularly useful and emphasise speed over depth. Also, the country work abort the highest rate of top rated universities per capita doesn't do standardised testing. It ain't perfect bet there's nothing nearly so silly all stuffing IQ tests into the exams.
You can't fix social mobility with IQ tests. Hell you can't fix ANYTHING with IQ tests.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Way back in the 1980s when companies complained of insurance rates for their workers the sales agents would casually mention that if a few of the older workers were laid off the insurance rates would go way down. Companies could create excuses for laying off or firing older workers and frequently did so. You can bet that with genetic testing any individuals will be laid off or prevented from advancement so that they are frustrated and quit their jobs. Companies need to be prohibited from gaining any knowledge of a worker's DNA.
Why do you say SJWs aren't a thing?
Because they're not. It's become a catch-phrase dogwhistle used to shout down arguments. Like: You said Y which makes you an SJW. You're an SJW, and SJWs do X therefore you believe X. And various other things. It's used as nothing else other than a random grab-bag mishmash of "shit I hate on the internet".
AmiMojo's sig qouting an AC has it nailed: someone I don't like and by the way I'm a fuckwit.
Please supply another definition if you disagree, but I've yet to see a remotely meaningful definition that fits the rather broad and perverse set of things SJWs have been accused of doing.
No one but him (a white guy) was offended but the major UK retailer caved just in case a shitstorm ensued.
Companies care desperately about PR. Welcome to the vaguely modern world.
No one but him
If you want to cherry pick the craziest crazy you can find, go ahead, I'm sure I can find equally crazy people (or more so). That doesn't really prove anything.
was offended
Speculation. As far as you know, no one but him complained, but you're speculating on people's internal mental state. Given that there wasn't a huge outcry, it's reasonable to assume that not _many_ people were offended. I've no idea how many people even saw it. I'm a regular Metro reader and I hadn't seen that article until you posted the link.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If your house is on fire, you get a bucket. You don't give the Joker an unlimited supply of napalm, some matches, and point him at your front door.
I get that they were so bewildered by right wing agitprop and the sabotage that Comey engaged in just before the vote that they ended up feeling that way. I also get that this was both a highly inaccurate representation of what was really going on, and that now, post-error, confirmation bias drives people to claim they were justified when it is patently obvious that they were not. Rational behavior is not generally the rule of the day when someone has committed a huge screwup, a fact Trump voters now must eventually face.
I have often discussed Clinton's shortcomings, which are many. As are those of the system she operates within in the usual manner of a bought-and-paid for politician. But compared to Trump who is both an idiot and a threat to the country's ultimate stability, she's a genius and a patriot. Voting for Trump "because Clinton" inevitably means you didn't understand one or the other of the two candidates, or possibly both. Some of that is because of crazytarded activity on the part of Drudge, Breitbart, Fox News and so forth. But some of it is because people were too lazy to do their own fact checking. And some, of course, because the Gaussian goes quite a distance to the left before "you can't vote" shows up as a differentiator.
Barring impeachment, which really isn't all that likely, we're in for a minimum of two years of continuing lies, idiotic behavior, and structural damage to the system that will reach into people lives and do very serious harm -- as it has already been doing.
Likely it'll get fixed, inasmuch as (a) Trump lost the actual vote, only gaining office because of the duty-abrogating machinations of the electoral college, which provides us with the incontrovertible fact that the majority of people were against him becoming president; and (b) at this point, no one is guessing if Trump is as big an idiot in real life office as the idiot he was playing on television. Now there is no doubt. So odds are excellent that there's going to be quite a backlash come 2018.
But it's still going to be a rough couple of years.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.