It is to protect citizens from any pre-existing conditions according to some obscure genetic disease that never manifests into anything.
It also opens up citizens to be categorized according to genetic code, is an invasion of privacy and could result in all kinds of investigation where none is needed As far as I am concerned, investigation into any disease process of the human body has to be conducted based upon APPARENT symptoms, function, quality of life and longevity. If there is a genetic 'anomaly' it might be interesting to investigate it and track it, but, with private funds and not government funds. Anomalies don't constitute 'definitive' threats to qualify of life and longevity. But, simply anomalies.
The EEOC enforces Title II (click title to entry - thank you) of GINA (dealing with genetic discrimination in employment). The Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Treasury have responsibility for issuing regulations for Title I of GINA, which addresses the use of genetic information in health insurance....
Genetic Testing: Further Debate with Richard Epstein (click here)
posted by Daniel Solove
...With insurance, there’s the issue of how equal a risk distribution one wants to achieve. We could have health insurance, for example, that is prohibited from charging people extra based on pre-existing conditions. In other words, we all bear the cost of health insurance equally. Another model is for those who are more at risk to pay higher premiums and those who are less at risk to pay lower premiums. I generally support insurance that is more equal – even if that means I pay more. The primary benefit of insurance, I believe, is to spread risk throughout society so as to eliminate certain contingencies in life. Society as a whole absorbs these losses, rather than particular individuals. Unfortunately, insurance only partially functions in this way today....Insurance premiums are supposed to be distributed among a pool of citizens / subscribers. The 'idea' is to realize that disease process is not 'fixed' in any person's life. Trauma, cancers and other diseases such as heart disease and COPD are based in lifestyle and environmental factors. So, the concept that a person should have health insurance rates that are defined on these particular aspects of life is unrealistic. People live their lives spontaneously and there is no accurate way of determining when the next trauma event is going to occur, while weather frequently increases those odds. So, if one applies for insurance in an area of the country where snow occurs should they pay more for health insurance? No. Why? Because people in these regions of the country become accustomed to these events and have better skills at protecting from them. So, the possibility of controlling health insurance rates based on trying to determine 'chaos' is a hideous concept. Any statistician worth their salt know that the larger the pool in any statistical analysis the likelihood all the chaos is absorbed into a very small margin of error. It is better to determine a health insurance rate on a national populous than on a small pool of people. It just works out better for everyone.
