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."

Re:What About Genetic engineering?

[AioKits]

Increase their mental capacity? If I had enough money to be 'rich' I'd be fiddling with the genes to increase the capacity of something else. Porn-stardom, here I come!

Eugenics

[capologist]

Why should people with genetic predisposition to health problems be entitled to affordable insurance? Let them die, and get those inferior genes out of the gene pool. Darwinism at work.

Better yet: Perform mandatory genetic testing at birth, and if they have problems, kill them. Then insurance companies won't have to worry about them.

Re:Genoism...

[EnterDaMatrix]

Well thank God for that.

Re:what?

[cp.tar]

I've had a Cavernous Malformations of the Brain and a non-cancerous tumor of the nerve sheath.

OK, that's why you hang around on /.
What's my excuse?