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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
You had me up to right there.
First, it's possible that this will devastate the health insurance industry. The rest of the industry (life, property, casualty) will be just fine.
Second, and most importantly, the health insurors are very smart. You don't build a multi-billion dollar industry by being anything but smart. That said, I think that some insurors are screwed if they don't jump on the bandwagon quickly.
Here's my prediction: the health insurers will start requiring genome sequencing once the price sinks below $1,000 per test. However, that won't matter in group plans. Group plans are already based on the 80/20 rule, and they're usually priced on what has been paid over the last few years for the group's coverage. Those group plans will keep being priced the same way because there's no way to filter out the 20% from an employer.
Individuals will be a much bigger problem. What's most likely to happen is a few people will get either cancelled or denied and the state legislatures will get involved. They'll most likely make it illegal for insurers to cancel coverage for someone, which will be fine for people who already have coverage but bad for those that don't.
Honestly, it's most likely going to lead to universal healthcare, but not for 20+ years. The technology isn't there yet, and neither is the cost. Once those happen, we're still 10 years away.
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Sorry, I meant effects specific to health insurance, I realize this will likely not affect other insurance types.
The problem with saying it won't affect employees insurance is that many employers are dropping insurance coverage for employees. As part of our lab, we read a very interesting article from the New Yord Times about how one of the largest reasons the number of uninsured are rising in this country is that employers, who used to be the main method of individual obtaining health insurance, are dropping insurance benefits.
Individuals are more frequently having to obtain their own insurance which allows insurers to screen and increase costs based on lifestyle choices, which is already happening. With the advance of sequencing technology both lifestyle and genetics are going to be taken into consideration making already expensive and difficult to obtain insurance, for those at high risk, even more expensive and less attainable.
Even if they manage to pass a law preventing insurance companies from dropping current customers because of increased risk for certain disease, are they also going to set prices for those companies? Without price control the only thing they are going to have to do is make it more expensive than the person can afford, of if they can still afford it charge enough money to make up the difference.
I don't understand why we have to wait until it's a serious problem before we address it. It seems very likely the technology will be here in less than 10 years and perfectly reasonable to expect this to follow. Why do we have to wait until most people can't obtain insurance because they are being denied or it is too expensive before we make healthcare more accessible and affordable without insurance?