This opinion article poses some very good questions on the topic...how can the 2 objectives on each side live together...just straight talk on the issue and a bit of visionary talent put in to words based on current economic trends and how health care is delivered and paid for...BD 

image As you may have heard, the U.S. Senate passed the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act yesterday. Once through the house, President Bush is expected to sign it. The law will have a huge effect on private health insurance—and may even hasten its demise.

If you, Joe Sixpack, get genetically tested and the results reveal that you’re predisposed to a bunch of different medical conditions, you’re likely going to run out at buy as much insurance as you can, and this new law will enable you to omit mention of your test results.

So, this is the nightmare scenario for private insurers:

  1. Everyone gets genetically tested.
  2. Every sick (or soon to be sick) person buys insurance, and subsequently racks up gi-normous medical bills.
  3. Insurers pay out the nose and are forced to raise premiums for everyone.
  4. Healthy people, feeling the sting of higher premiums, drop their coverage. (Their genetic crystal ball says they don’t need health insurance, anyway.)
  5. Insurers are left with a bunch of sick (read: expensive) policyholders (and are forced to keep enrolling them).
  6. Private health insurance goes belly-up.

InsureMe Agent Blog: Did Congress Just Kill Private Health Insurance?

3 comments :

  1. Is this a propaganda piece for private health insurers? Warming up for the battle against Obama-care?

    In any event, these doomsday predictions simply don't hold water. People with genetic diseases already are insured....they gravitate to large employers or government jobs...or they go on the public roles with Medicare (early because of SS disability coverage), or Medicaid.

    These people are ALREADY costing all of us. But, here is the new wrinkle....they ARE ABLE TO PAY SOME OF THE COST....by paying monthly premiums.

    WOW! What a concept! The sick paying a share of their premiums rather than expecting someone else to. What a crazy idea.

    PS: The word verification is so arduous...taking over 5 tries. Do you really need it?

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  2. Thank you for the comments. On the word verification, yes it is necessary as I was forced to add this due to spammers creating bots of links to drug sites, etc. so the comment section was getting spammed with comments with no relevance and I apologize for the attempts and can see what Google might suggest here.

    On the item discussed, sick people normally don't choose to be sick..it's life and unfortunate for those who are sick, but does this make for a category of "bad" people because they are sick?

    It is not a fair system for either the sick or the well, but it's what we have in place and unfortunately the sick are seen as the "bad guys" as they have more cost associated with working at wellness. Have you are anyone you might know been turned down to to a pre-existing condition? There are many out there in this situation...and if you haven't noticed the number of employers offering insurance is on a downturn as well.

    Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I welcome all here, as that's what the blog is here for, but health care needs to go beyond the line of cost and get back to being a humanity instead of everyone pinned against one another over a dollar and I recently posted about the insurance industry almost pricing itself out of being affordable for many...so let me ask a simple question of where do we go from here and can we get around condemning those with physical disease and afflictions?

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  3. It's really hard situation. I am dealing Life insurance in Canada but we have optianal health insurance too, but here it takes only about 30% of expenses, rest is public health care. Genetic tests are great step in medicine and can improve human's life much. But how to cope the situation you described? I believe the best way is to promote health insurance to everybody. If your gen. tests are all right, it doesn't mean you never will be ill or injured! So I don't think insurance companies will lose many healthy clients. If yes, they have to cope to persuade them to return...

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