Under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Privacy Act, companies cannot ask employees to take gene tests
and cannot use any such results in employment decisions; insurers are not permitted to require gene tests or to use the results in coverage decisions.
At the moment, companies selling long-term care insurance — unlike medical insurers — are permitted to ask about health status
and take future health into consideration when deciding whom to insure and how much to charge.
Yet even if just a minority of 23andMe customers decided to game the current insurance system, “it’s enough to perturb the market,” said Dr. Robert
Cook-Deegan, a professor at the school for the future of innovation in society at Arizona State University, who has studied the issue.
If that happens, said Mark Rothstein, the director of the bioethics institute at the University of Louisville’s medical school,
even more people with Alzheimer’s will end up on Medicaid, with the federal government paying for their nursing home care.
But for companies selling long-term care insurance, these tests could be a disaster, sending risky patients
in search of policies even as those with fewer risks shy away, damaging an already fragile business.
New Gene Tests Pose a Threat to Insurers -
By GINA KOLATAMAY 12, 2017
Pat Reilly had good reason to worry about Alzheimer’s disease: Her mother had it,
and she saw firsthand the havoc it could wreak on a family, much of it financial.
