One is that genetic testing possibly increases the overall cost of healthcare, by introducing new tests preventive treatments that people are advised to get. Before modern cancer treatments, many cancer patients were untreatable and they died. Now there are new and expensive treatments that are worthwhile, but they cost money. So, total amount spent on treating cancer goes up. Genetic tests & subsequent tests and testaments are a new cost, that will probably increase overall medical costs and insurers liabilities. Eventually, premiums will just go up to cover this. It's a long term problem.
The second thing for insurers to worry about is information asymmetry & adverse selection.* This is a more structural problem. The more predictable future costs are, the less suitable insurance is as a way of paying for things. If you have a 1% chance of huge medical bills in the next ten years, you can pay 1% of those potential bills as a premium and get pice of mind. If you have a 50% chance of those bills, you probably can't afford the 50% premiums.
The danger to insurance companies is that people might do that before purchasing insurance and use the result to inform their purchase decision. The net result is adverse selection and fewer people purchasing insurance.
Explanation of the math here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6807426
Also, in other countries than the U.S., insurers are supposed to maximise well being and life expectancy...
Isn't a mastectomy for a 35-year-old cheaper than paying for years of chemotherapy for a fragile 80-year-old person whose cancer has already spread too far for surgery and needs to be hospitalized for months on end?
In the post-ACA U.S. "rescission" like this is now illegal, short of actual fraud. And it would have been illegal prior to ACA in the case of genetic testing due to HIPPA and GINA. Not that rescission was ever nearly as common as reform proponents liked to suggest.[1]
[1] http://healthblog.ncpa.org/rescissions-much-ado-about-nothin...
This seems reasonable. Someone does a genetic test, gets a result, and sees a proper doctor to discuss the results. If that person has a strong family history, and has the mutated genes, they might take preventative action which imght include surgery.
Insurance companies should be paying for that.
It's not like someone's got a whole body CT scan and is then getting unnecessary tests from the uncertain results of the scan.
> At the same time, health insurers can’t increase premiums for these potentially expensive customers because of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), a law that makes it illegal to do just that. The logic goes: People don’t get to pick their genes, so it’s unfair to penalize them for the unfortunate bad luck of having a predisposition to Alzheimer’s.
I expect to see a bunch of people who don't disclose their 23andMe results and who then have their insurance cancelled.
Insurance companies have departments dedicated to finding ways to avoid paying out. See, for example, the woman who was about to get treatment for breast cancer when her insurance company cancelled, stating her undeclared visit to a dermatologist for acne several years earlier. (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/16/health.care.heari...)