the future of personalized medicine. This could be good if protections are in place to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to people based upon the results of the genetic tests.
Peter, this should please you:
"A bill that would prohibit discrimination by health insurers and employers based on the information that people carry in their genes won final approval in Congress on Thursday by an overwhelming vote.
The legislation, which President Bush has indicated he will sign, speaks both to the mounting hope that genetic research may greatly improve health care and the fear of a dystopia in which people’s own DNA could be turned against them.
[...]
The legislation, known as the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, prohibits health insurance companies from using genetic information to deny benefits or raise premiums for individual policies. (It is already illegal to exclude individuals from a group plan because of their genetic profile.) Employers who use genetic information to make decisions about hiring, firing or compensation could be fined as much as $300,000 for each violation.
[...]
For health insurers, the bill may avert the need to compete in a complex game of calibrating policies to an ever-changing set of genetic risk probabilities. But as genetic tests provide ever more information at lower costs, the entire notion of insuring against unknown risk that has long defined the industry may be upended. It may also give ammunition to those who argue for universal health care. “Ultimately unlocking all these genetic secrets will make the whole idea of private health insurance obsolete,” said Karen Pollitz, director of the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University..."
Congress Passes Bill to Bar Bias Based on Genes
