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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.
My mom doesn't need a bill for that. She is a grown woman and what she decides to do in the privacy of her home with one or more willing partners is neither my business, nor the governments.
The emails were a felony only in your imagination. If the Republicans keep pulling shit like this they will become even more irrelevant in reality than you imagine the other party is.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
The linked article can't be read if an adblocker is active.
The current state of the law:
Employees who refuse to participate in an employer wellness program can be charged up to 50% more for employer-provided health insurance.
If genetic testing is part of the wellness program then employees have to voluntarily authorize the genetic test. If an employee participates in the wellness program but declines included genetic testing then they can't be penalized with the higher insurance premiums.
The new state of the law, if this bill passes:
Employees who refuse genetic testing that is part of a wellness program can be considered non-participants in the wellness program and be charged the higher insurance premiums.
The comment in the summary that the new bill would "...let employers see that genetic and other health information." is the current state of the law as it relates to wellness programs (Work wellness programs put employee privacy at risk). There is nothing in the new bill that suddenly decreases patient/employee privacy.
"Mandatory" wellness programs, themselves, were controversial and lacked privacy protections when the Democrats insisted everyone participate. They're no less controversial today as the Republicans expand those wellness programs with additional components.
So we will soon have Gattaca? https://www.themoviedb.org/mov...
The eye gouging program is entirely voluntary.
Employees can qualify for not having premiums doubled by simply removing an eye. It's not our fault, but our fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value. And you'll still be able to see if you were responsible and maintained two healthy eyes prior to the program. It won't reduce our healthcare costs if you join the program, but it will reduce our payroll costs if you fail to qualify for the discount.
Rest assured that you can't be penalized under current law if the eyeball you submit for testing is defective in any way, but should the legal landscape change we may be forced to re-evaluate the policy.
Have a nice day
Nullius in verba
I was wondering about this so I googled it. Dems opposed mandatory wellness back in 2013. tranquilidad is full of it. Got modded up to +5 even.
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So they're a felony for Pence then, is what you're saying.
And it's a much worse felony, presumeably, that President Trump communicates about governance related issues using his unsecured Android phone.
Hypocrisy of the highest order.
The whole email affair was a mountain made out of a mole hill to scam gullible people into voting for someone who wants f*cking corporations to have the right to demand genetic testing of employees if it will notch up their profit one notch.
F*ck people are stupid. Is there another planet with intelligent life?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The biggest problem with the US health insurance is the way it's tied to employment: it means that people end up in weird employment-based risk pools, that they lose health care when they lose their jobs, and that people don't get the same kind of tax breaks when insured on their own.
There are plenty of the proverbially "advanced nations" that have private health care instead of "single payer"; however, they usually have private health plans that aren't tied to employers. That's what Congress should fix, first by giving individuals the same kind of tax breaks as employers for health plans, and then by gradually phasing out employer-based health plans altogether.
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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Thank you for voting Democrat in 2008 and 2012 - you helped more than double my insurance costs
You can blame lobbyists and the Republican filibuster on earlier attempts for single payer. Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was a compromise reached through negotiation with insurance lobbyists. It is modeled on the earlier Massachusetts Accountable Health Care act (Romneycare), and mainly adds requirements for insurance providers to cover preventative care and has provisions to expand Medicare. But the rest of it remain the same, it's an expansion of a system that Massachusetts already has operated successfully.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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
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.