Posted on 05/02/2008 7:28:42 AM PDT by haveaheart
After more than a decade of debate, Congress has reached agreement on the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which will protect the rights of patients who undergo genetic screening, specifically preventing discrimination by employers and insurers. Conditions that can cause sudden cardiac arrest, such as Long QT and Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy can often be identified through genetic testing, and the enactment of GINA is an important step to remove potential legal and financial barriers for individual and family screening.
Conservatives can agree with this measure.
Given the potential for abuse by insurance companies, employers, and the government, genetic information should NOT be a consideration.
It has the potential for being the front end of a “master race” episode.
Not to mention that without such protections, more people would be encouraged to kill "defective" babies prior to birth should such problems be found.
Like in the movie Gattica; if every genetic flaw was part of your “record”, you could essentially be made into a 2nd class citizen; or maybe rendered obsolete.
This is incomplete because it does not cover the Veteran’s Administration.
They need to pass a VA-GINA.
*ahem*
Clapter Beej
Very well played, my fiend!
clapter
Dear Sir:
You are hereby notified that you owe me a new computer screen. Apparently, coffee flying at high pressure does not bode well for your typical LCD monitor in the Iraq and such as
Toetap
Sincerely,
Why shouldn’t insurance companies be able to use all relevant information when underwriting and computing risk?
As if you ever passed one.
Did you miss my reference to the “master race” episode?
Does anybody in your family have heart disease, cancer, diabetis, etc.?
Would you like to be denied insurance on that basis?
A perfect world is not defined by insurance companies incurring no risk!
Oh, I was unaware everyone had the right to subsidized insurance. Heck, lets pass a law forcing them to insure everybody for free.
What “subsidized”?
I wasn’t aware that insurance companies were entitled to NO RISK!
So, calculating premiums based on all pertinent information is the equivilent of operating with no risk? Sorry, I can't see how you connect those dots. Why should a person with no known risk for heart disease pay as high a premium as someone with a massive genetic predisposition for heart disease?
Ah, so employers would have to require physicals and charge different premiums for employee’s health insurance?
Or, do they just deny an individual the job based on the physical?
BUMP!
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