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+-   Ban on genetic descrimination moves forward-> on Thursday April 24 2008, @03:23PM Anonymous Coward

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2008, @03:23PM
biotech
An anonymous reader writes "The bill to ban 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. Not all of it, but I think you will be surprised how much (IAA cell & molecular biology postdoc). But that uncertainty is what insurance is based on. If discrimination is allowed, the person with the bad genes is S.O.L. because no one would insure them — but if it is not allowed, the companies are screwed, because if I know I'm going to get something, 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?"
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