TOPIC: SHOULD INSURANCE COMPANIES HAVE THE RIGHT TO LEARN THE GENETIC PROFILES OF THE PEOPLE THEY INSURE?
Atleast 200 words, Hurry!
Answers
So, you're thinking you might like to check out one of those inexpensive new tests that would give you some insight into, say, the health implications of your ethnic heritage. It may, incidentally, turn up findings you may or may not want -- say, on your Alzheimer's disease risk, or your risk of developing lung, breast or skin cancer.
And let's say in the next year or two that when you apply for life insurance (or long-term care or disability insurance), the insurance company demands to know whether you've had any genetic testing done, and if so, wants to see it. Or requires some genetic testing done as a condition of providing coverage.
Didn't see that coming, did you?
The insurance companies have -- and, fortunately for us, so has a group of bioethicists from Columbia University, who in a commentary in this week's Journal of the American Medical Assn. pondered the not-at-all distant future in which insurers will seek access to applicants' genetic test findings before making their underwriting decisions.
Now that it can cost as little as $1,000 to have a full-genome scan -- and that more than 700,000 Americans have done it -- the future is now.
Although the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 bars the use of genetic information for health insurance coverage decisions, it does not do so when it comes to life insurance, disability insurance or long-term care insurance.
A few U.S. states have adopted some protections against such use by insurance companies, but most have none. Only Vermont outright bars its use by insurers. And some insurance companies have already started asking.
For starters, the authors of the commentary -- Robert Klitzman, Paul S. Appelbaum and Wendy K. Chung, all of Columbia University's Medical Center -- acknowledge that having one's genetic information scrutinized by an insurer opens an individual to being denied coverage -- or offered coverage at inflated rates -- for having acted in one's own best health: Afterall, aside from a few untreatable or unpreventable genetic diseases that could be turned up, many of the genetic variants currently being found interact with other factors in the environment, and with behaviors.
Knowing what those risks are, an individual can take steps to lower her risk of developing whatever disease she carries an elevated risk for developing. And clearly, our society is not bettered if knowing -- and acting on that knowledge -- is discouraged.
The conundrum is that people who suspect they carry a genetic variant that could affect their life span or their ability to care for themselves are -- at least now -- the ones who are most likely to get genetic testing performed. Those whose fears of premature death or disability are confirmed will disproportionately apply for health or disability insurance.
If insurers are kept in the dark about applicants' genetic risks, they respond to their increasingly sick pool of claimants by hiking their premiums to everybody. Insurance for people of average risk (or at least for people who don't know of any outsized genetic vulnerabilities they may have) may be priced out of the market. And that's not good either.
The commentators suggest there may be ways to thread this bioethical needle: Give all people access to a certain level of insurance without any requirement to ante up genetic information; to get layers of coverage beyond that minimum, insurance companies may require genetic information.
My answer is Yes: B/C, everyone(And, I mean EVERYONE) has to learn the genetic profiles of everybody else.
Including-Donald Trump.
Donald Trump needs insurance so, he signs up and gets Geico as his insurance provider...
One day, Geico calls Donald Trump on his cell phone...
Donald Trump answers after being very busy in The White House.
The voice on the other end sounds familiar to Donald Trump.
"Hello, Donald.." says the voice.
"Hello, Do I know you?,I recognize your voice." Donald Trump says.
"My name is Larry" says the voice.
"Oh, Hello Larry." Donald Trump replies happily.
"Can you give me your genetic profile, Mr.Trump?" Larry asks.
"Uh....Sure, I was born in 1946 in Queens,New York I was the fourth child of Frederick C. and Mary MacLeod Trump. Frederick Trump was a builder and authentic estate developer who specialized in constructing and operating middle income dormitories in the Queens, Staten Island, and Brooklyn sections of Incipient York. I was an energetic and effulgent child, and my parents sent me to the Incipient York Military Academy at age thirteen, hoping the discipline of the school would channel my energy in a positive manner. I did well at the academy, both convivially and academically, elevating to be a star athlete and student bellwether by the time I graduated in 1964.