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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

#151

Post by hocuspocus »

eru wrote: post #150
hocuspocus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides health insurance: retirement pensions, short-term/long-term disability/incapacity, unemployment benefits, reasonable notice periods and severance pay, parental leave, ... all these things are a given in Germany and in most 1st world countries.

All those benefits have to be paid for. (And the US does have quite a lot of people on long term disability benefits.) Restrictions on firing just make companies less likely to hire. People can negotiate reasonable notice periods, and parental leave, severance pay etc, if they rather want that than more money every month. (But that negotiation / demand only works if the economy is humming along fine. So that is way m…

> People can negotiate reasonable notice periods, and parental leave, severance pay etc, if they rather want that than more money every month. (But that negotiation / demand only works if the economy is humming along fine. So that is way more important.)

Vulnerable workers aren't in a position to negotiate anything.

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

#152

Post by mnm1 »

Exofunctor wrote: post #144
electricEmu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 peop…

I can't imagine how people have such an incorrect view of how insurance works. No, car insurance is not you subsidizing other people. Car insurance is you paying in proportion to your own estimated risk . That means if your expected costs are 5x higher (nicer car, young driver, etc.) you pay 5x more. Medical insurance in the US emphatically does not work this way. More expensive people don't pay proportionately more…

"It's too bad that your friend has a disease, but I'd rather have them pay for it than pass the bill off to a bunch of innocent people who aren't sick."

His friend can't pay for it, so what you're essentially saying is you'd rather have his friend, and people who can't afford their medical care in general, die rather than have others subsidize healthcare through their taxes (or any other way). In other words, because of the current cost of healthcare, only the obscenely-rich get to live while the rest die off. That's just incredibly cruel, vile, and disgusting, but sadly, hardly a minority opinion.

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

#153

Post by M_Grey »

hkmurakami wrote: post #40
M_Grey wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe you want a kid who doesn't sleep much, has a high drive, and low empathy. That assumes you want success uber alle though, what if you want your kid to believe that handling poisonous snakes is the key to salvation, or something like that? Then you might need to breed a very different kind of mind.

Well exactly. Hence its hard to say what we'll desire given that we don't really know what things will be like. Who knows, pale skin may sadly be more desirable than ever before if things continue their current course. :(

It's weird to think about... people already try to look like particular types so much with just makeup, clothing, and surgery. As you say, it might be that we get some weird genetic monocultures for a while.

Then of course, maybe they'll all die off. Breeding is a tricky business, as any farmer or botanist will tell you, and at least there you're taking it slowly.

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

#154

Post by emiliobumachar »

kolinko wrote: post #95
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…

The problem is that you cannot have any sort of sensible health insurance on an unregulated market. On an unregulated market, insurers would begin to drop people who get chronically sick, or land in risk groups. Before you can say: "so just forbid dropping insured people" - that's what US initially did. But there was a simple loophole around that - you don't drop people per se. You just start a new insurance company,…

So, how come the car insurance market manages to survive? The industry can dump chronically risky drivers and cars all it wants.

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

#155

Post by witty_username »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #126
witty_username wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be implying that is a bad thing. What is wrong with that? Allowing them to donate organs gives them more choices. Who owns a person's body? And donating the organ helps people who needs organs. The person who donates and the person who receives do this voluntarily if they feel they benefit. I think it's deplorable that people are dying from lack of organ donations while there are people with healthy organ…

Having a compulsory 'lottery' for organ donations for all would help both groups too.

How would you incentivize donors? Are you saying we should force people to donate organs? That is horrible.

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

#156

Post by vilmosi »

patrickaljord wrote: post #89
yummyfajitas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We have single payer here in France and we are way less entrepreneurial than the US. In fact most entrepreneurs here hate single payer as it imposes huge taxation on them for something that would be cheap under a private insurance system because most startup founders are young.

I'm not that familiar with France's system that much, but if national insurance is mandatory, wouldn't private insurance be essentially subsidised by it? Which is why you think it's so cheap in comparison. Can you even opt for private only insurance in France? It would be the only way to compare costs.

Don't take it wrong, I agree France is less entrepreneurial, I just don't think healthcare is the reason.

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

#158

Post by int_19h »

M_Grey wrote: post #75
int_19h wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to isolate yourself comes with its own costs. Turning away refugees is one thing; but what happens when people are sufficiently desperate that they will be willing to take up arms to secure a place under the sun for themselves and their kin?

...And then, after slaughtering those people and years of insularity, nationalism, and populism... what's going to be left, but for those insular nations to fight over remaining resources? I can't see a nuclear nation shrugging and saying, "Well I guess we're conquered! Here are the keys..."

Of course not. But do understand that we're talking about large scale warfare here. Even if you're willing to set moral issues aside, it's not going to be cheap. Those who want to isolate their countries from "third world problems" are going to pay for it in cold hard cash. Thus, even they cannot truly claim to be unaffected.

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

#159

Post by int_19h »

wyager wrote: post #141
int_19h wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a reason medical tourism to Mexico and India is so prevalent Yes, and it's because labor is cheaper in these countries than in yours, because their standard of living is lower, and therefore living costs are cheaper. So it's cheaper for you , because you come from a country with a higher standard of living, and your income is much higher than average in those countries. So for you, their prices are cheap. B…

Nope, this is clearly wrong. Cost of labor and standard of living alone can't account for the cost difference. Average net-adjusted household disposable income is (per OECD) only 3x higher in the US than Mexico. GDPPC is 5x higher. Medical care in the US is drastically more expensive than these numbers would suggest. Claiming "it's because Mexico is poor" is a lazy argument that falls apart very quickly. > doctors wi…

I don't dispute that care in US is more expensive for a variety of reasons.

But your post stated that the only, or at least the biggest, reason why that difference exists between US and Mexico is because of less regulation in the latter, and more healthy private market resulting from that. I point out that a large part of that difference does have to do with standard of living. It's not true just for healthcare - the same goes for most other things. It's why people from US often retire to those countries.

> Doctors already get paid US wages. Not really sure what you were thinking when you wrote that.

Of course, but they get paid out of your insurance. You were, again, comparing that system to going to a place like Mexico, and paying out of pocket. If you were to pay out of pocket here in US for those wages, it wouldn't really be affordable.

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

#160

Post by james1071 »

maxerickson wrote: post #113
james1071 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many things that started 70 years ago which have long since gone. So, there must be forces which sustain the US model, where the employer pays for medical insurance. Also, I fail to see how employers offering medical insurance should make insurance for an individual any more expensive. So, while I appreciate the sentiment that something is clearly wrong, the two things that you mentioned are not the cause.

A big one is that there is a tax deduction for employer provided health insurance. So offering a decent health plan is more compensation than just handing over the cost of the plan (which would be taxed). As far as how employer coverage can drive up individual costs, there are a couple of factors. One is that people with good health plans often don't pay attention to how much they cost, and often don't have much of a…

The reasons that you have given might be part of the explanation, but on their own they do not explain it.

Yes, it is true that there is a tax benefit to employers purchasing healthcare insurance, which is tax deductible, and providing it as a benefit in kind.

However, it does not follow at all from that the insurers should benefit: their costs are not affected and in a competitive market, they would price at marginal cost.

Yes, it is true that people in employer plans could be perceived as being a better risk than those who are do not have them.

They would still be better risks (and 'deserving' of a lower premium) however they obtained their health insurance.

So, as I said before, there must be something else going on.

Similar arguments apply to your claim that employers are less price sensitive than consumers - that really is implausible, given their buying power and incentives to maximise profits.

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