But if this government is willing to allow insurance companies to factor in 23andme type data, what makes you think that will be the extent of this type of genetic data analysis? That is the far-fetched part to me, it relies on a very narrow range of possible dystopias that takes advantage of voluntary genetic testing but stops short of mandatory or coerced testing.

It's reminiscent of some prepper wanting to exclusively horde USD. I just don’t see a doomsday scenario in which that matters compared to hording gold or some other store of value with more intrinsic value. It's behavior suggests a weird cherry-picking of what are likely correlated risks.

The ACA forbidding insurers from using DNA data was a much debated point of a very contentious piece of legislation in a very recent congress. Coercing the public to provide samples of their dna outside of criminal proceedings is unconstitutional. Why do you think the risks of those 2 things changing are remotely comparable?

>Coercing the public to provide samples of their dna outside of criminal proceedings is unconstitutional.

Most people in the US are insured through private companies. How would it be unconstitutional for those companies to refuse to insure or jack up prices for people who decline genetic testing?

It just seems strange to believe that this data would be both incredibly valuable to health insurers and that they would have no new ways to gather it outside relying on decade old data from now defunct companies. Modern insurance companies don't identify smokers by buying the old Marlboro Miles database, they make disclosing smoking a part of the application process.

The irony being that the whole thing is political theater: the basic outline of the ACA was a Republican bill before Obama ran with it, at which point the Republicans no longer wanted to visibly support it. And, the real net benefit of the ACA has been to further entrench private health insurers, which at this point is not a Democratic goal.

And they have been in the past. Yet the ACA remains.

A single thumbs down was all that saved it.