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Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#51

Post by wyager »

electricEmu wrote: post #50
wyager wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By essentially any metric, state provided (single-payer) healthcare is the best-known solution to the healthcare problem. Except things like, you know, quality of care or satisfaction. Single-payer healthcare beats the American implementation, which is not a high bar to clear. There's a reason medical tourism to Mexico and India is so prevalent. Totally deregulated private doctors seem to kick the ass of state heal…

If America completely deregulated the medical industry then where would you get that complex brain surgery? It doesn't sound like completely deregulated markets cater to that speciality. It sounds great until you need something that isn't routine.

Still America. We have the best doctors because we're rich and have the vast majority of the top schools, not because of red tape.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#52

Post by adrianN »

M_Grey wrote: post #25
whiskyant wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world with mandatory genetic testing, genetic engineering in order to "give your child the best possible start" will definitely ring true.

I wonder what traits we'll program for? Intelligence, maybe, but that's tough to manage and I'd guess that without a complete understanding you'd get a lot of madness. Physical traits will be easier to select for, especially gross ones like size and overall strength. Selecting out congenital illness would be another step. If you could though, if you had a clear understanding of how Trait A and cluster of genes/epigen…

Health, physical attractiveness and intelligence are the obvious ones. We already know many genes that are associated with cancer and other illnesses, so screening for those and discarding embryos could already be done with today's technology. I suspect eye, hair and skin color aren't very difficult either. Seeing how popular skin bleaching products are I could see many parents paying money for lighter offspring. Intelligence is more difficult as you already said, but as we get better at reading the genetic code, that'll become possible as well. If this kind of genetic engineering became legal and socially accepted, there surely would be a lot of money for researching these kinds of things.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#53

Post by yummyfajitas »

dragonwriter wrote: post #38
yummyfajitas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, Obamacare (which significantly mitigates the healthcare related costs of changing jobs) had no noticeable effect on startup formation or job separations. I've seen similarly no effect from Romneycare. https://images.washingtonpost.com/?url=http://img.washington... https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2010/ted_20100816.png Do you have any evidence (as opposed to hypothetical anecdote) suggesting this is actual…

> In fact, Obamacare (which significantly mitigates the healthcare related costs of changing jobs) The ACA doesn't all that significantly affect the healthcare-related impact of switching jobs (it slightly mitigates the healthcare related cost of being a difficult-to-insure individual and moving from a job that provides a group plan to one that doesn't), and the parts of it that did have some impact on that were have…

The parent poster said this: ...start companies [without loss of health care], and losing healthcare as you change jobs...

Obamacare does in fact solve both these problems.

According to you, how long will it take for potential startup founders to figure out that Obamacare actually gives them the ability to do a startup without losing health insurance? 10 years? 20 years? Is a person who is unaware of Obamacare after many years (and unable to adapt to changing conditions with years of warning) really a plausible startup founder?

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#54

Post by wyager »

lisper wrote: post #44
wyager wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By essentially any metric, state provided (single-payer) healthcare is the best-known solution to the healthcare problem. Except things like, you know, quality of care or satisfaction. Single-payer healthcare beats the American implementation, which is not a high bar to clear. There's a reason medical tourism to Mexico and India is so prevalent. Totally deregulated private doctors seem to kick the ass of state heal…

> There's a reason medical tourism to Mexico and India is so prevalent. Yes: health care in Mexico and India is cheaper. Not better. Cheaper. > I wouldn't want to get, say, complicated brain surgery in Mexico. I rest my case.

> Not better. Cheaper.

Nope, it's also better for the vast majority of medicine. Have you ever used Mexican private healthcare? I have! Customer service and convenience is through the roof compared to US healthcare.

> I rest my case.

Not a very good case!

The reason you wouldn't want to get complicated surgery in Mexico is that they don't have as many medical specialists, or as much equipment. The US is richer and has better schooling, so we have a huge supply of experts and medical technology. For the cutting edge of medicine, the benefit of having this outweighs the costs of receiving care in the US.

However, almost all medicine is simple and doesn't require a particle accelerator or superconductors or whatever else you can find in cutting-edge American medicine.

I wouldn't buy a radiation-hardened satellite microprocessor from China, but I'm perfectly happy to buy a Chinese laptop!

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#55

Post by [deleted] »

M_Grey wrote: post #22
apathy wrote: post #3

This is severely fucked. Wellness programs do little or no good but do allow employers to offer incentives for participation. This on the other hand is GATTACA level fuckery. GINA took many years to be put in place; now the proposal put forward will potentially cause people to lose health coverage or their job based on things they cannot control. Potentially their kids, too, since these idiotic "wellness" programs ar…

To be fair, kids born today are pretty fucked for so many reasons. In a way, this kind of dystopian future is averted when you consider the rate of accelerating ocean warming, permafrost melting, etc. It seems likely that all problems short of that which is going to end us, sort of gets subsumed. All of these social problems are in the context of a failing ecosystem that is being increasingly overtaxed. So... the kid…

[deleted]

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#57

Post by rpedroso »

programmarchy wrote: post #20
drawkbox wrote: post #12

We've got to separate healthcare from employers before this goes to far. Companies have no business in your health and we still tie health insurance to employment as a legacy error not a benefit. Many problems arise from healthcare provided from the job such as ageism, culling the sick, making it harder to change jobs or start companies, and losing healthcare as you change jobs, not to mention helping the fixed price…

The history behind our current nonsensical scheme started with FDR capping wages during the great depression, which spurred companies to offer "perks" like healthcare to recruit talent. An example of one market intervention leading to another, and another, ad nauseam. Totally agree that insurance should be decoupled from corporations. The way the "market" is regulated hampers people from working independently or star…

There are a few problems with this explanation:

1. FDR did not propose a wage cap until 1942, 3 years after the Great Depression had ended. It was a temporary wartime fundraising effort (and was quite popular with the public). In fact, health insurance really first came into existence during the Great Depression (mostly to ensure physicians and hospitals got paid).

2. FDR's wage cap did not pass.

What actually happened was the passing of the the Stabilization Act of 1942, which gave FDR a power (that he invoked) to freeze wages and salaries during the war. The freeze was deeply unpopular with the labor movement, who threatened mass strikes. As a compromise, congress exempted health insurance (and other benefits like PTO and pensions) from the freeze.

This was certainly a contributing factor (proportion of US population with healthcare roughly doubled from 1940 to 1945), but ignores the other factors that prompted the rise of employer sponsored healthcare. Indeed, by 1945, less than a quarter of Americans had health insurance.

Rather, the two largest contributors to employer-sponsored health insurance was the demand of health coverage by labor unions and the 1954 legislative change that made health insurance tax exempt.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#58

Post by yummyfajitas »

lisper wrote: post #44
wyager wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By essentially any metric, state provided (single-payer) healthcare is the best-known solution to the healthcare problem. Except things like, you know, quality of care or satisfaction. Single-payer healthcare beats the American implementation, which is not a high bar to clear. There's a reason medical tourism to Mexico and India is so prevalent. Totally deregulated private doctors seem to kick the ass of state heal…

> There's a reason medical tourism to Mexico and India is so prevalent. Yes: health care in Mexico and India is cheaper. Not better. Cheaper. > I wouldn't want to get, say, complicated brain surgery in Mexico. I rest my case.

I personally find Indian capitalistic medical care equivalent to the US. Under most circumstances (i.e., I don't need a super specialist who happens to be located elsewhere) I'll always choose to have work done here in India.

I've made this choice before and never regretted it. You can read about a description of my spine surgery if you like:

https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2015/medical_tourism.html

Similarly, I messed up my wrist a month ago while I was in the US. I waited until I got to India to even bother with a doctor - too much hassle in the US ("no I don't want narcotics, just tell me how to fix it") whereas over here I just swiped a credit card. Unlike in the US, I even knew the price before I bought services!

(Any doctor/hospital who won't tell you the price will get no business - that's capitalism + cost conscious consumers for you.)

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#59

Post by electricEmu »

Exofunctor wrote: post #49

While I think health insurance shouldn't be attached to employers, I don't really have an objection to insurance companies using genetic testing. This is certainly an unpopular opinion here, but as someone who believes that medical care is a service, not a right: I think it's unfair to force people to subsidize the healthcare of other people, regardless of the mechanism used. When you have car insurance, the insuranc…

> I think it's unfair to force people to subsidize the healthcare of other people, regardless of the mechanism used.

This is literally car insurance in the United States. You buy insurance, put money up front for your own health, or risk paying a penality. It's also literally the ACA.

> If let health insurance companies do this, then yes, healthcare would get substantially more expensive for very risky/unhealthy people.

Unaffordable. My mother in law died from cancer recently. Coverage was impossible before; in America's free market that constantly pays out dividends. The ACA was the first time any insurance was affordable.

I'm sorry, but the views you've put forth appear to diminish the plight of others who aren't young and healthy. Those views and policies would kill my friend afflicted with an autoimmune disorder.

_Edit: spelling_

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#60

Post by ryanwaggoner »

davedx wrote: post #47
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, my question still stands. I'm asking because I frequently see this kind of climate change alarmism on forums (it's the end of civilization, billions will die, etc) but my sense from an admittedly cursory reading of the estimates is that the dangers of climate change are likely to be an epic refugee crisis from coastal flooding, famine, and war. Hundreds of millions will die, and many more will see a sub…

You think given the way things are going today, civilization as we know it will survive this? > an epic refugee crisis from coastal flooding, famine, and war. Hundreds of millions will die, and many more will see a substantial decrease in quality of life for generations.

You phrase this as a rhetorical question, as if it's obvious that given "the way things are going today", of course we won't survive.

I don't really know what you're referring to. On a century-long scale, what is "going on today" that is so abnormally terrible?

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