Essay On The Pros And Cons Of Genetic Testing For Life Insurance

A genetic test can reveal that a person who is otherwise healthy has a higher risk at some point in the future of beingunable to work, or requiring extensive medical care, or otherwise being more predisposed to an adverse state of health. In turn, this information could be used to affect decisions regarding employment and insurance.Some companies have used genetic screening and/or genetic monitoring of employees and job applicants for research and other undisclosed purposesCertain countries require genetic tests to verify biological relationships amongst family members for immigration purposes.But employers and governments are not the only ones that use genetic information. Insurance companies are alsointerested in knowing who is more likely

At first, the debates were focused on the use of genetic testing for life insurance (Subramanian, 1999; Zick et al., 2000; Hoy and Polborn, 2000). However, in parallel to the rapid progress in scientific efforts to sequence the totality of the human genome, concerns about the consequences of genetic testing have been extended to other fields of insurance including health (Kaufert, 2000; Mossialos and Dixon, 2001; Geetter, 2002; Nowlan, 2002). On the one hand, because health insurance choice is a natural way to meet differing individual preferences and is important to promote efficiency through the benefits of competition, information on individual genetic risks may be considered as a way to promote more efficient price discrimination in the establishment of insurance risk premiums. Availability of genetic testing may provide new tools for a better knowledge by insurers of the individual-specific prices of health insurance. On the other hand, because a key issue in health insurance is that, unlike other services, the identity of the buyer can dramatically affect costs, it could be expected that genetic testing will exacerbate adverse