Posted on 03/10/2017 8:10:21 AM PST by MarchonDC09122009
House GOP would let employers demand workers' genetic test results
https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/10/workplace-wellness-genetic-testing/
House Republicans would let employers demand workers’ genetic test results
By Sharon Begley @sxbegle
March 10, 2017
A little-noticed bill moving through Congress would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employers see that genetic and other health information.
Giving employers such power is now prohibited by legislation including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic tests are part of a “workplace wellness” program.
The bill, HR 1313, was approved by a House committee on Wednesday, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed. It has been overshadowed by the debate over the House GOP proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but the genetic testing bill is expected to be folded into a second ACA-related measure containing a grab-bag of provisions that do not affect federal spending, as the main bill does.
“What this bill would do is completely take away the protections of existing laws,” said Jennifer Mathis, director of policy and legal advocacy at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a civil rights group. In particular, privacy and other protections for genetic and health information in GINA and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act “would be pretty much eviscerated,” she said.
Employers say they need the changes because those two landmark laws are “not aligned in a consistent manner” with laws about workplace wellness programs, as an employer group said in congressional testimony last week.
Top wellness award goes to workplace where many health measures got worse
Employers got virtually everything they wanted for their workplace wellness programs during the Obama administration. The ACA allowed them to charge employees 30 percent, and possibly 50 percent, more for health insurance if they declined to participate in the “voluntary” programs, which typically include cholesterol and other screenings; health questionnaires that ask about personal habits, including plans to get pregnant; and sometimes weight loss and smoking cessation classes. And in rules that Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued last year, a workplace wellness program counts as “voluntary” even if workers have to pay thousands of dollars more in premiums and deductibles if they don’t participate.
Despite those wins, the business community chafed at what it saw as the last obstacles to unfettered implementation of wellness programs: the genetic information and the disabilities laws. Both measures, according to congressional testimony last week by the American Benefits Council, “put at risk the availability and effectiveness of workplace wellness programs,” depriving employees of benefits like “improved health and productivity.” The council represents Fortune 500 companies and other large employers that provide employee benefits. It did not immediately respond to questions about how lack of access to genetic information hampers wellness programs.
Rigorous studies by researchers not tied to the $8 billion wellness industry have shown that the programs improve employee health little if at all. An industry group recently concluded that they save so little on medical costs that, on average, the programs lose money. But employers continue to embrace them, partly as a way to shift more health care costs to workers, including by penalizing them financially.
Do workplace wellness programs improve employees’ health?
The 2008 genetic law prohibits a group health plan — the kind employers have — from asking, let alone requiring, someone to undergo a genetic test. It also prohibits that specifically for “underwriting purposes,” which is where wellness programs come in. “Underwriting purposes” includes basing insurance deductibles, rebates, rewards, or other financial incentives on completing a health risk assessment or health screenings. In addition, any genetic information can be provided to the employer only in a de-identified, aggregated form, rather than in a way that reveals which individual has which genetic profile.
There is a big exception, however: As long as employers make providing genetic information “voluntary,” they can ask employees for it. Under the House bill, none of the protections for health and genetic information provided by GINA or the disabilities law would apply to workplace wellness programs as long as they complied with the ACA’s very limited requirements for the programs. As a result, employers could demand that employees undergo genetic testing and health screenings.
While the information returned to employers would not include workers’ names, it’s not difficult, especially in a small company, to match a genetic profile with the individual.
That “would undermine fundamentally the privacy provisions” of those laws,” said Nancy Cox, president of the American Society of Human Genetics, in a letter to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce the day before it approved the bill. “It would allow employers to ask employees invasive questions about … genetic tests they and their families have undergone” and “to impose stiff financial penalties on employees who choose to keep such information private, thus empowering employers to coerce their employees” into providing their genetic information.
If an employer has a wellness program but does not sponsor health insurance, rather than increasing insurance premiums, the employer could dock the paychecks of workers who don’t participate.
The privacy concerns also arise from how workplace wellness programs work. Employers, especially large ones, generally hire outside companies to run them. These companies are largely unregulated, and they are allowed to see genetic test results with employee names.
They sometimes sell the health information they collect from employees. As a result, employees get unexpected pitches for everything from weight-loss programs to running shoes, thanks to countless strangers poring over their health and genetic information.
Sharon Begley can be reached at sharon.begley@statnews.com Follow Sharon on Twitter @sxbegle
Privacy Policy | Comment Policy Steve March 10, 2017 at 8:18 am I’m sorry, but why do we need someone’s genetic information in order to execute a workplace wellness program? What if the employee is screened and determined to have a variant that has a high likelihood of causing cancer in the near future.
The employer would know that would increase their payouts, so they could find a way to terminate the employee.
There are all sorts of ethical dilemmas that could play out if employers have the genetic information of their employees.
stylin19a wrote: ".... I wonder if this is ok under HIPAA?"
THAT IS AN EXCELLENT POINT! HIPPA should be all that is needed to deny sharing personal info without your express consent.
RE: “That’s our good old GOP totalitarians. We leave the revolutionary socialist world, and step into corporate mercantile authoritarianism.
Google and Facebook will quickly offer to buy all the DNA results from employers, who can then legally require it of you. They build a giant national DNA database.
Awesome work guys./s”
+1000
You and some others here fully get it.
Boy will we old cranks have fun telling future youngsters how things got to be so Eff’ed up on our watch...
We should start immediately with CONGRESS, We the People, Your EMPLOYER Demand it. Then ALL Public Employees Nationwide.
We the People, Your EMPLOYER Demand It.
I think that’s Virginia Foxx R-NC
This is one example of where the fact that the Left has gone completely batsh** insane really hurts us.
If they were in any way rational you’d see a very broad coalition come together and push back at this in a way that would have them soiling their britches on Capitol Hill.
I don’t think many Liberals want their genetic profiles being shuffled around either.
Lemme guess...they are exempt from this right?
This is a terrible bill not just re the genetic illness traits.
There are too many super rich and evil people like George $oreA$$, the Obamas, the Opecker Princes, the Clintoons and Silicon Valley CEO’s, who would abuse these lists to find donors (kind word) to cure certain diseases in their bodies or their families.
These DNA tests could set up non volunteer donor lists of body parts like livers, hearts, Kidneys, lungs, eyes and other organs.
Hipaa is a joke and offers little assurance that personal health data is not indiscriminately shared.
I urge Everyone here to look at how 8000+ healthcare entities share your medical information without guarantee of anonymizing your medical record data.
SEE: thedatamap.org
Congress refuses to address this privacy issue because data brokers, insurance, and medical entities make Billions off of your data.
Gov’t likes the easy access, too.
Your DNA isn't “pure”? Then no employment for you!
This is what happens when you tie health insurance to employment, and let the government meddle with the healthcare industry.
The real insult is that the government, business, politicians, lobbyists, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies are all in collusion to foist this upon Americans.
Healthcare is one of the last cash cow industries that has yet to be bled dry.
This isn't about your personal health or well-being, this is about squeezing as much cash out of the dwindling middle class as they can tolerate.
The solution is to go back to where employers are not responsible. All other courses are problematic including this bill. The explosion of cost in healthcare can be traced back to this giant mistep made decades ago....and every policy to built on this foundational mistake has made matters worse.
Time to alter or abolish fedgov.
And people wonder why employers lay off all their staff and hire contractors instead — even foreign ones. Let the contractors worry about their own genetic defects. If the guy shows up to work one day with a foot growing out of his forehead, you send him home and get another contractor in his place.
Let’s track this down the road aways.
As this procedure becomes more common, it’s reasonable to presume the process will become more efficient. That will soon create a modern day leper colony of folks that insurance companies won’t touch.
In addition, it would also seem logical that “circumstances” will arise making it necessary to test citizens earlier and earlier in their life span. In the name of public interest, you know.
How long before genetic testing of fetuses leads to mandatory abortions in order to “save money” for medical providers?
That slippery slope just got a lot more slippery.
“sharing personal info without your express consent. “
If you sign up for our “wellness program” we’ll cut your premiums by $500 and give you a $200 Amazon gift card! You do need to sign our four-page online “agreement” form, then you are in!
There you go- people will sign to get the benefit without reading the 4 page consent form, and since they consented, by signature, to share certain health metrics with the employer’s contracted service, HIPPA is satisfied.
Giving employees who comply a cash benefit or premium reduction is the same as charging those who do not comply.
The whole genetic theory of disease is bull crap anyway. People may be more susceptible to some diseases based on their genetics but it is by no means predestined, not by a long shot.
You are right. I misread it. Still BOOOOOOOOO.
So you’re actually in favor of government intervention in matters of private businesses and individuals. Sorry, but I missed read your earlier post. You agree government should interfere so long as you agree with it.
HIPPA requires express agreement - hence the reason for the pharmacist requiring your signature for every Rx filled.
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