No good driver discount: Obamacare Architect: Genetic “Lottery Winners” Have Been Paying An “Artificially Low Price” | RealClearPolitics.
It’s 12 million people, about a third of which will end up paying more under this law. And that as you said in the introductions sort of the idea. We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance.
The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price. That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return. And that, by my estimate, is about four million people. In return, we’ll have a fixed system where over 30 million people will now for the first time be able to access fairly price and guaranteed health insurance.
I don’t understand the “if you’re going to get sick” thing.
Re. “if you’re going to get sick”
Perhaps he’s talking about genetic tests which expose risks. Even so, those tests don’t predetermine that “you’re going to get sick.” They represent current thinking that some genetic traits lead to a tendency towards certain diseases. An insurer might turn down people for that reason, but it should be possible to find an insurer who won’t, because genetic testing for disease is not a sure thing yet. I think the problem with this analysis is that it assumes an employer-based market for insurance. If it was common for people to choose their own insurance, I don’t think this would be an issue.
The whole premise of the argument is flawed. He’s from MIT? WTF! Like Austan Goolsbee, he starts from a leftist premise and argues that anything that doesn’t agree with it is “wrong.” The flaw in his argument is it’s like saying that because some people “won the genetic lottery” and just “get” school material quickly, and the current school system is “discriminatory” against kids with learning disabilities, or kids who have broken homes, that the “winners” are just going to have to work as hard as they used to and “donate” some of their grades to the disadvantaged students to even everything out.
I guess they don’t do this anymore, but when I was in school I used to hear all the time from my teachers (to other kids), “Life is not fair.” Sometimes I think they said this just to get the kids to shut up, but sometimes they used it as a teachable moment. This Admin. is creating a mess trying to force our society to be more fair, managing decline.
“Life is not fair” should be part of the daily school curriculum.
Regarding genetic testing, health insurance companies are not allowed to use the results of genetic testing and they don’t ask family history questions. They do ask individual medical history questions, although that is all giong away Jan 1st.
To the best of my knowledge, life insurance companies don’t use genetic testing either, although they do ask family history questions. This actually allows the consumer to use their genetic testing results to their advantage if the don’t have any signs or symptoms of whatever predisposition they may have.