New 'GINA' Law Would Stop Genetic Discrimination

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Cystic Fibrosis diagnosed prior to delivery of newborn.

Being in the medical field and having to deal with insurance companies on daily basis, I can assure you that this has been held up by "Big Time Insurance Execs" whose salaries by the way are posted for the public. But anyway...

Due to a lucky chance and great sonographer, we were able to test prior to delivery by amnio to find out that our newborn would be born with the Cystic Fibrosis gene. I now find it very assuring to know that insurance can't discriminate against our child for symptoms that may not have shown or been diagnosed for years. They deserve no protection further to enable them to deny insurance to our son, especially since they would not even cover the amnio (genetic testing) because it was "elective". Thanks to some obviously caring lawmakers to protect the people for a change instead of "Corporate America" who has been putting money in their pockets for years.

objections to GINA are not about privacy

Ah, but HIPAA already guarantees privacy of bona fide medical information. That's not the objection. Ask any health care worker: If your mom goes into the ER and asks the staff to call you, they can't tell you anything about her condition on the phone unless she signs a HIPAA release.

GINA basically means that that employers and insurers can't use the information that is gathered through official or other means to discriminate against an employee or insurance applicant.

As a public health worker, I can guarantee you that the objections to GINA's passage came from the insurance industry, who'd like to charge higher rates or exclude people with genetic conditions; and from employer groups that whined that a person with high medical bills could put small employers out of business. (Which would only be true if they self-insured, but is faintly possible.) Another objection would be that high costs of medical care for one person in a small-group employer are sometimes used by insurers to gouge them for more money, making insurance unaffordable for the whole group. And that really does happen.

These objections are based on the idea that people with genetic conditions can cost insurers millions of dollars, which would cut into their profits, and that to save money, they should be allowed to exclude them. Interestingly, it only takes one normal person having a motorcycle accident followed by a 2-month stay in the neuro ICU to have the same effect as far as cost goes.

So the whole discrimination thing is a way for insurers to keep even more money than the record profits they are already scoring. Next stop: Insurance reform!

What were the objections

The article says that the legislation was being held up for 13 years. What was the objection?

I know that some will point to partisan issues or some corporate boogie-man, but those don't stand up to serious debate for long. There must have been some sort of serious objection as genetic testing is bound to help everyone no matter of age, race, sex, wealth, or corporate affiliation. Some curiosities....

1. Were there any potential negative unintended consequences sited in holding up the legislation?

2. Would the legislation, due to privacy rules, prevent wide-spread survey or research for patterns that could be used by medical researchers?

3. Will the legislation prevent fore-warning individuals of potential future medical issues because their genetic data is private and not available to the CDC or other medical agencies?

4. In the Virginia Tech massacre, the health records of the shooter were private and that prevented the authorities from protecting us from a lunatic. Is this type of case relevant to this legislation? In other words, could genetic testing one day spot lunatics and the privacy provisions of the law prevent us from identifying the lunatics before they kill dozens of people?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for privacy of medical information. I just don't accept at face value the arguement that there were no valid arguements. Surely mean old white male Republican corporate apologists (assuming they actually exist) have legitimate reasons for holding up such legislation (assuming they are the ones who held it up). So, what were the reasons?

Genetic Nondiscrimination

The day this gets signed into law is not a day too soon. And, though now it seems to be passing by the vote of every sitting Senator (and perhaps most every House member), it's a curious thing that the whole thing could have been stalled for 13 years that Republicans held control of the Congress (until 2007.) It simply proves that very good ideas FOR CITIZENS can and will be advanced by Democrats when they have control, and foot-dragging for the benefit of CORPORATIONS will be commonplace when Republicans have control.

This law apparently gives citizens some protection from being bankrupted by the insurance industry with respect to "conditions" that might emerge in the future from genetic predispositions. The next step is a health care policy in this country that protects citizens and families from being bankrupted by the insurance industry as a result of "conditions" already diagnosed. Just as people deserve to be unafraid to have a genetic test, so also do they deserve to be unafraid of getting a bad recorded diagnosis in the event they have a checkup.

Get yourself a Democrat in The White House as well as a filibuster-proof boatload of them in the Congress, and then watch the magic of what can be done for PEOPLE when those few old Republican white men are no longer standing there to oppose you on behalf of the corporations.