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Privacy Fears Send DNA Tests Underground
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Feb 24, 2008 11:08 AM
from the no-not-literally dept.
from the no-not-literally dept.
biobricks writes "The New York Times is reporting that people who could benefit from genetic testing are too afraid their health insurance companies are going to raise their rates or deny them coverage to find out the health information contained in their own genes. There is a growing "genetic underground" where people pay for their own tests so they won't have to share the results with insurers, and beg doctors not to divulge their genetic status in medical records. A bill that would ban genetic discrimination by insurers and employers — and presumably make people feel safer about taking care of their health — is stalled in the Senate. We've discussed these types of personal DNA tests in the past."
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Two Companies Now Offering Personal Gene Sequencing 146 comments
corded writes "Yesterday, deCODE genetics announced the launch of their $985 personal genotyping product, deCODEme (video), beating their competitors to market. Perhaps not coincidentally, 23andMe's website is suddenly much more informative today, and the New York Times features a preview of 23andMe's $999 offering. deCODEme and 23andMe will scan about a million and 600,000 sites across the genome, respectively and assess your risk for common diseases, along with providing information about ancestry, physical traits, and the ability to compare genes with friends and family."
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logan's run? (Score:4, Funny)
Insurance policy (Score:4, Insightful)
An insurance is a way for the insured to get an acceptable cover for risks and an insurance company also has to take a reasonable risk. Even if a certain genetic predisposition exists doesn't mean that it actually is triggered in an individual.
Re:Insurance policy (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this just another sign that the adoption of new technology (e.g. broadband) by the American public is slowing due to governmental and societal hassles? You don't have to be a wacko like Michael Moore in Sicko [amazon.com] to admire the benefits of a public health system. If people can't lose their coverage, people might not fear DNA testing.
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Re:Insurance policy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Insurance policy (Score:4, Interesting)
Nonetheless, isn't there some kind of an economic argument that if insurance companies paid for people to avoid one big illness, with their longer lifespan they would end up costing the company more in smaller illnesses over time?
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Re:Insurance policy (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus, the quicker someone dies, the less chance they have of getting one of those expensive dieseases ...
Its like social security - a REAL patriot will die on their 65th birthday!
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Re:Insurance policy (Score:4, Insightful)
If your insurance premium was per-life rather than per-year, then yes it might...
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An ounce of prevention... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:An ounce of prevention... (Score:5, Informative)
...is a front for MEGA Life and Health [businessweek.com]. Though they certainly try to hide it, NASE is not an actual indepentent "association", but the marketing arm of MEGA. Fortunately, the high-pressure sale techniques of the agent I encountered were enough to tip me off that something was wrong, and I Googled before I bought and so learned how bad the "coverage" MEGA provides actually is [boston.com].
Avoid NASE [google.com]. It's a scam.
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Re:Thanks for the tip... (Score:4, Insightful)
I like the idea of a Health Savings Account in conjunction with a High-Deductible Health Plan [opm.gov]. The idea is that you contribute a limited amount annually to a special IRA. Each year, you pay (tax-free) for your medical care out of that IRA until you hit your deductible. Then, everything's free. Next year, you contribute the same limited amount, the deductible resets, wash-rinse-repeat.
The neat thing is that you benefit from leading a healthy lifestyle, but you're still covered in case of some catastrophic health issue.
One secondary effect of using an HSA is that it makes routine healthcare decisions economic decisions. I think that's a good thing. Others might not agree. But I suspect that if everyone used these things, the cost of healthcare would decrease. Just my opinion.
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Re:Thanks for the tip... (Score:4, Informative)
No, actually, not at all. A Health Savings Account is an individually-owned savings account. Anyone who wants to do health insurance this way has to have their own, and provide all the money that goes into it. The catastrophic insurance is provided by private insurance companies, much like car insurance.
Correct. It's not at all like any of those things. In fact, I'm actually very relieved that it's nothing like the NHS [typepad.com]. I prefer my healthcare *not* to kill me...
No, I think an HSA is probably as close as you can get to the polar opposite of Socialized Medicine.
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Re:An ounce of prevention... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words,
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Re:An ounce of prevention... (Score:5, Informative)
Versus 24 cents of every dollar in the US. And we have better overall healthcare outcomes. (Although to be fair, the US has some pockets of spectacular poverty without an equivalent in Canada, except for Vancouver's DTES, so the health care outcomes comparison is probably apples and oranges.)
So why not just, y'know, by an act of congress, make the government the single-payer for anybody who wants it? We basically did the same thing in the 60's when we brought in medicare, the doctors actually went on strike to try and prevent it, but it's a genuine Good Thing to have.
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Re:Insurance policy (Score:5, Insightful)
But, that's exactly what they do and want to do...especially if you are trying to get insurance privately!! If you have a pre-existing condition as innocuous as athlete's foot....I've hear of people being turned down. I went indie...and before I got insurance, I let my other lapse and waited too long for cobra...and had a HELL of a time getting anyone to take me at any price due to high triglycerides.
I finally did by getting with a fly by night place...and then using that as reference to get with a real insurance co...but, these days I gotta tell you, I pay for most all tests I can on my own, and I try to get my Dr. to write down as little as possible when I have a complaint so as not to put anything in a permanent record about my health.
I still can't get long term disability...dues to some complaints about chest pains which turned out to be nothing at all.....that is on record.
I can easily afford whatever premiums they would charge, but, I can't get them to even offer me coverage.
It isn't so much that health care is too $$ or coverage is....it is that insurance companies can cherry pick who they want to cover. All I want is catastrophic coverage...and I can save the rest I want in an HSA that rolls over, and can be invested in the mkt..and grows...pre-tax. But, I just find it is hard to get coverage at all if you even appear to be a risk...
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Re:Insurance policy (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, yeah, assuming that insurance companies are playing straight. But they're not. There's a million poeople in the US employed full-time to do essentially nothing but find ways to deny the insurance claims of people who have been paying health insurance premiums for years.
Compared to up here in Canada, you guys pay lower taxes, but I'm not ever going to be charged one cent for a medically necessary treatment. (granted we still have some catching up to do with europe on drug coverage...)
So, you can pay X% in taxes and have free medical. Or you can pay some fraction of X in taxes and make up the difference in health insurance, which may or may not cover you when you actually need it when you get cancer or something.
Who was that greek stoic who said "Call no man happy, until he is dead"? It's like that with insurance. Call no man insured, until he is dead.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder sometimes why such vital part of our society is used mostly for profiteering. There was an article in the economist few weeks back: they compared the avoidable deaths due to problems in health care system and costs of the system in various developed countries. The result was interesting: US was in vary bad shape - the highest investment and poorest record. One may ask why but I think the answer is rather obvious - no control and focus on profit mak
Re:Insurance policy (Score:4, Insightful)
Say a company makes millions of dollars worth of payouts a day, if they delay for 2 months, they make a LOT of money.
Doctors paid by the insurance companies usually have an incentive to work for the insurance company rather than the patient. So more people die that way.
Sometimes it's cheaper if the person dies - sure you pay out eventually, but I think you pay out less. They'll do the math accordingly.
I guess the idea is if some people have to die so that you can afford another yacht/plane/mansion, too bad for them.
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My experience as a phlebotomist (Score:5, Interesting)
Results often don't end up with the patient (Score:5, Interesting)
The only effective way I've found to actually get records is to tell them I want records faxed to another doctor... at a number I receive at.
If my experience is any indication, most patients don't have *access* to their own medical records, let alone control over them.
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Re:Results often don't end up with the patient (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, I've seen other medical offices in which their general policy is to avoid giving official documents to patients, in fear of litigation. My thought on the subject: A happy patient is less likely to sue, even if a mistake is made.
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Re:Results often don't end up with the patient (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably not that extreme, but I do think it reflects on US American society that it has an image of being rabidly litigious. No troll intended, but if I lived there the constant fear of someone suing me over trivial nonsense would severely impact my quality of life.
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Um, how is that different from....? (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution of course isn't congress passing a bill that makes such discrimination illegal, but rather to pass a bill that establishes universal health insurance (preferably single payer, but lets be honest, the US is far too much a classist society to adopt that... sigh.) Though what's particularly stupid about such a bill is that it would outlaw discrimination from insurers if I noted in your record that you had a blood test that said you were predisposed to diabetes or hypertension, but it would not outlaw the same discrimination that would occur if I noted in your chart that your BP was 160/100 or your fasting blood sugar was 160. If we diagnose your hypertension or diabetes with a $2000 test, you are safe, but if I diagnose it with a $3 lab test or by taking your BP several times, you are hosed.
Brilliant.
Re:Um, how is that different from....? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask people if auto insurers should be able to raise rates for people who cause an accident, most will say yes. Ask people if auto insurers should be able to raise rates for people whose cars are hit while they're parked, most will say no. Ask people if health insurers should be able to raise rates on smokers, most will say yes. Ask people if health insurers should be able to raise rates for someone genetically predisposed for a disease, most will say no.
What people want isn't economic-driven health insurance, nor is it universal health insurance. What people want is a system where you have to pay more for negative influences under your control, but not pay more for negative influences outside of your control. This is why universal health insurance is a no-go in the US - people get hung up on the idea that folks who take unnecessary risks or don't take care of their bodies will be getting a "free ride". They don't care that someone who develops Alzheimers will be covered and raise their insurance rates; in fact they're altruistic enough that they'll gladly donate to charities to help people who develop diseases outside of their control. But they find repugnant the idea of them being forced to (via universal health care) help someone who won't even try to help himself.
That's the obstacle universal health care has to overcome to be accepted in the US. That's why people don't like the idea of genetic testing to determine health insurance rates, even though on an economic level it makes perfect sense. Figure out a way to incorporate this concept into universal health care and Americans will probably be all for it. If you can't find a way to do this, then you'll have to resort to statistical models of overall benefit (the no-fault vs. at-fault auto insurance debate - where determining liability costs more than the benefit of assigned risk), which is a much harder sell.
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Opening a can of worms here, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Opening a can of worms here, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Killing anyone who has a disability(or just leaving them to fend for themselves) probably does not bode well for the longevity of your culture. There have been groups in history that killed any young that had abnormalities, one of the most famous being the Spartans. You don't see their culture dominating the globe, do you?
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Re:Opening a can of worms here, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
To use a real life example, does it make sense that the people in Nebraska should have to carry the insurance burden for the people who choose to live in hurricane alley?
Yes. If they don't like that, maybe they should move to a country where people care less about each other. Plenty to choose from.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if you're talking about LA (Louisiana to those that keep thinking I'm talking about a city in CA) you might want to do just that.
Fully aobut 1/3 of the energy for the US comes in through, is processed/refined in this area. Also, a lot of the seafood of the US comes from here. Not to mention that all those nice farmed products fro
Re:Opening a can of worms here, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it may sound heartless and uncivilized, but at what point is a person who is fundamentally broken down kicked off the public teat?
It not only sounds heartless and uncivilized, it actually is. Do you really want a society where there's legless people scrawling around on skateboards begging for food because they're "fundamentally broken down"? It wasn't that long ago we did, and I consider it progress that the developed world mostly doesn't have that anymore. Evolution has really nothing to do with it.
To use a real life example, does it make sense that the people in Nebraska should have to carry the insurance burden for the people who choose to live in hurricane alley?
I don't really know. But at least you can choose to not live in "hurricane alley". I'm not sure what the big alternative is here for people who are "fundamentally broken". Death?
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Re:Opening a can of worms here, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Evolution is not a religion. It is not a guide for the proper way to live. It does not provide any of the answers for deciding this problem.
Just because Mother Nature does something one way, does not mean that this is somehow the best, most proper, fairest, smartest, long-term safest way, or that it has any other advantage except for the short-term survival-of-the-fittest well-not-actually-you-but-at-least-your-genes kind.
Mother Nature is a bitch.
You can argue to what degree humans should care and provide for other humans in a society, but do not use evolution as an excuse.
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The movie "Gattaca" (Score:3, Informative)
Making money versus helping people (Score:3, Insightful)
That is what you get when health insurance companies are allowed to make money: they try to make money and do not care about the health of the people as long as they can not make money. In my opinion the health insurance companies should be rewarded for their service to people and peoples health, not for making money.
Of course, I am living in socialist Europe, so for me there is not really a problem. However, for you guys in the US, it kind a sucks, does it not? Would it hurt to transform your health and insurance system as to promote health for everyone instead health for those who can and are willing to pay? Of course, there will always be people not paying, living as unhealthy as possible (obesitas, alcohol, smoking, driving in cars, etc), but in the end would it not be nice to know that your health is save no matter what happens with you economically?
Re: (Score:3)
No. Because no one is subject to random economic events. Yes, people unexpectedly lose their jobs, but anyone who is well prepared won't be subject to significant risk because of that. They will have savings set aside and they understand that they will have the (
Re:Making money versus helping people (Score:5, Informative)
You begin living as frugally as you can, but the bills keep mounting. Your insurance has a $2,000 deductible per year, then you have to pay 10% of costs up to a maximum out of pocket of $6,000 per year. So the first several months, you pay out $6,000, but then the first of the year hits and you again have to pay $6,000 in the first few months of the next year. So your $50,000 in savings is now down to about $25,000 just with your out of pocket costs and paying 18 months of EMTALA coverage.
The chemo and radiation you receive gives you profound weakness and nausea/vomiting. Unfortunately the inexpensive antiemetics phenergan, compazine, and reglan all give you a severe dystonic reaction. So the only one you can take is zofran, which your insurer refuses to pay for because its non-formulary. You only use it for the worst days after your rounds of chemo and split pills when you can, but its the only thing that will help. Even ordered online at the cheapest Pharmacy you can find they cost $10 a pill. So you end up spending an extra $300 per month for medicine in addition to the $15 per month copay each for your other half a dozen medicines. So your out of pocket drug costs are $400 per month. That plus your bare minimum living expenses (food, utilities, tax on your house, travel to and from the hospital) are about $2000/month. So by the middle of the year, your savings have dwindled to almost nothing.
So you begin borrowing by taking a loan out on your home, this gets you through the end of the year and into the beginning of the next. Unfortunately, as a result of the treatments, you suffered a mild stroke and now have to walk with a walker. So you begin the laborious process of applying for disability. You are initially denied, and hire a lawyer who works on commission, but he tells you it will probably be a year or more before you get disability (and hence medi-medi coverage as well.)
I'm getting tired of writing this, and depressed because its all too common. Over half of people in the US in 2006 who filed for bankruptcy did so because of health care bills. Over half of those were employed and insured when they became ill. Don't fool yourself into believing that you can render yourself immune from this should you lose your health and hence your usefulness to a capitalist society. We discard 'useless people' like yesterdays newspaper. And the only reason it hasn't happened to you is you are still producing.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's some problems with his story:
- $6000 year maximum? Not at any job I've ever had. Think $1500 for deductibles and then you're done paying. Everything beyond that goes on the policy.
- EMTALA is a subsection of COBRA and has nothing to do with continued coverage after termination. It has to do with refusing coverage and trans
If insurance companies *could* get at the info.. (Score:4, Insightful)
How long before insurance companies proactively raise rates, but then offer a discount back to normal if you provide genetic test results?
Is the bill worded such that neither penalties nor bonuses can be given out due to a genetic screen?
How much different really is it from family history, just a more accurate measure?
Insurance is all about modeling the risks for an individual based on available medical data. In *theory*, if genetic screening can increase the accuracy, then people with clean genetic situations should get decreased rates from what they pay now, while those with the dispositions carry the burden of the risk. If all goes according to the hypothetical, neither way is particularly feels 'fair'. On one hand, your rates go up because you got stuck with some genetic predisposition for heart disease that you couldn't control, that may never manifest. On the other hand, someone with a genetic disposition that will never suffer a particular ailment, will have to pay for the risk of that ailment anyway.
Of course, the chances insurance companies would *lower* any rates is slim, just jack up rates with the excuse of apparently increased risk individuals without ever acknowledging the class of reduced risk individuals.
Re:If insurance companies *could* get at the info. (Score:5, Insightful)
Insurance is all about modeling the risks for an individual based on available medical data.
No, Insurance PROFITS are all about modeling the risks. Insurance is actually about distributing unknown risk among a large number of people. If I had a time machine and could look into the future and see if I'd ever need insurance, the whole thing would become completely pointless, as I'd know exactly what was going to happen. If the insurance company had access to my "time machine test results", they'd either cancel my health insurance if I was going to get sick, or I'd just sock all that money away in a bank account if I wasn't.
In *theory*, if genetic screening can increase the accuracy, then people with clean genetic situations should get decreased rates from what they pay now, while those with the dispositions carry the burden of the risk.
I think what people are really concerned about here is that certain individuals will just not be able to get health insurance. We don't really worry about that for car insurance, or flood insurance, or whatever, since you can always choose to not drive, or live somewhere else. Without health insurance, the only real alternative if you get gravely ill is death, or bankruptcy and losing your job (then maybe medicaid will take over). I think most people would say those aren't very good alternatives.
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Not discrimination (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
But it is wrong now. The entire US healthcare risk underwriting system is wrong.
By having thousands of individual risk pool managers obsess over saving money by kicking out people who might actually use healthcare services, we ironically end up with a system that costs us almost twice as much overall as any other country, while at the same time not even covering a huge swath of the population.
Meanwhile, needlessly stupid thing like worrying about who gets a hold of medical tests causes stress for millions. Millions more are tied to their corporate jobs like feudal serfs because of fear of losing healthcare benefits.
To stop this insanity, there needs to be one single uniform national risk pool.
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Re:Not discrimination (Score:4, Insightful)
Medical fact is not discrimination. Making a different decision based on differences in those medical facts IS discrimination. The person saying "we will not give insurance to this person due to this criteria" is discriminating. Wether that kind of discrimination is or not wrong is another matter. I personally think it is.
One thing is to make a person who decides to smoke pay more, as it is a conscious decision of that person, and that person could give up smoking to avoid higher fees, and another is to somehow marginalize you because of a gene, something that you cant change, and that you didnt choose.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument that insurance companies already discriminate against people is exactly why this system needs to change. If a private system is not able to bear the burden of risk associated with provide all people the same coverage, it is a broken system. Sure, you and they will want to complain about how unfair that is and I will continue to tell you that this should not be about fairness. Insure
Nothing to worry about, yet. (Score:3, Interesting)
So don't worry about taking your curiosity underground, the evil bastards simply don't care yet; and when they do, you'll simply get your test date in the mail (or the option to drop your coverage).
Blood Secrets (Score:4, Insightful)
Individuals should get the same explicit copyright protection on our personal data, including our genetic and other health data, as corporations get on recorded products. Personal data must be destroyed once the transaction for which it was initially transmitted is complete, with short timeouts, unless explicitly permitted into some specified other scope. Violations should be criminal violations of our privacy rights.
Probably we need a Constitutional Privacy Amendment to make indisputable the force and clarity of this protection of our rights. The Fourth Amendment already protects our private data, but the government hasn't been enforcing it. Since the 4th is itself redundant to the Constitution's lack of a created power to invade our privacy, it's clear that the fundamental line between private and public that is the basis of our liberty must be reiterated strongly or be ignored.
As our entire world becomes defined by the Info Age, the people better get our government to properly protect our privacy soon, or there will be blood.
The insurance are NOT in the business of (Score:4, Insightful)
They are in the business of evaluating risk and spreading that risk to all of their share holders while charging a premium based on the risk in order to MAKE A PROFIT.
You, as an individual, don't matter. In fact you, as an individual, don't exist.
If you fall into the cost side of the equation, they will try to eliminate you as you are reducing their profits.
You can't run health care for profit.
The United States is the LAST hold out in the civilized world where people think it can be. (Actually, they DON'T but the major shareholders, being anonymous pools of capital, DON'T CARE about the suffering of individuals.)
You aren't even a line item on a spreadsheet somewhere.
The only way to actually run a health care system (as opposed to the health-don't-care system currently in place) is with socialized medicine, just like we have a socialized military (you don't want a bunch of militias running around after all.)
Health is a social responsibility.
Insurance is an actuarial game played for profit. (As long as you don't need it, you don't mind losing a little bit since it is spreading risk around to all the players. The problem comes when you DO need it and the companies DON'T WANNA PAY. [With health care, you might very well DIE!!])
The problem is that we call it "insurance" (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone on insurance already has a "single payer system," it's just that the "single payer" is the group of health insurance companies instead of the government, but they act and think with close to one voice. Right now we aren't covering everyone, though we could for about 1.2T/yr through the existing private system*. It would be a significant burden if the cost were borne by employers, as most businesses just can't foot the bill for $8-12k/yr/employee, especially when the coverage could cost more than the employee's salary.
Anyway, the point is that there may be two systems needed - one for health maintenance, and one for catastrophic coverage (which I like to call "hit-by-a-bus" coverage). As with all things, there are some gray lines at the boarder between the two. And this doesn't really address the DNA problem, though it would be reasonable to expect a test to get a rate for the catastrophic coverage, since that is a pretty straight forward way to more accurately determine risk, and no different than charging 22 year old males with sportscars more for auto insurance - even if the never drive more than 35 mph, and only take trips to church on Sundays. That's what probability and risk determination is about. If you don't like it, save your money yourself for that rainy day.
I will say that I would prefer cancellable "term" policies rather than the annual individual policies that are common today. Right now, if you're too expensive, you can simply not be renewed. With a term (say, 30 year) policy, you have a guarantee of coverage for your term with embedded annual escalation and whatnot, just like life insurance. You might even get a product similar to whole life insurance, which guarntees your coverage until you die. (Note: just like life insurance, health insurance has caps on your benefits).
As with all other things, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, so the total money into the system = total money out of the system. There profit on gross in healthcare insurance is probably small, just like most businesses (2-8%). My point is that everyone can't just put in their $120/week, get routine healthcare (office visits, minor events, maintenance prescriptions, and some elective procedure) taken care of and then have a heart attack and run up a $280k tab, and expect the system to stay solvent. Healthcare is one area where manpower is necessary to get things done, and people who are competent and reliable cost a _lot_ of money to hire, train, and retain. Most people would be surprised to find that the job which pays them $25/hr requires billing them out at $75/hr to be worth while for the company (you know, that 2-8% profit margin). And hiring reliable people to work on the most basic parts of your health costs quite a bit more than $25/hr most places.
*extend the federal employee group for BCBS standard to count every citizen, paid at roughly 100M policies at 12,300/yr, per http://www.opm.gov/insure/health/08rates/2008non_postal_ffs.pdf [opm.gov]
Re:He who pays for the test owns it (Score:5, Interesting)
And since this is a business contract, your medical privacy is meaningless since the insurer can also (as a condition of selling you the policy) require you to allow access to all medical records and tests. Of course they likely won't do that unless you actually become sick and they have to pay money for your care. If they do, they hire people to scour your medical record for one slip up (like you may not have revealed you had a cold in December 1987 for which you were prescribed robitussin with codeine) as a means to void your policy.
Events like the recent ruling in favor of a woman whose insurance was canceled while she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer (because she had failed to reveal a history of a heart ailment and she mis-estimated her weight) are unusual - but only in that the arbitration judge ruled in her favor. Most of the time, arbitration (which you must agree to when buying any private insurance - they all require it) goes in favor of the side with the best attorneys to back them. No surprise that the insurers love arbitration. However this case was so egregious that even the arbitration judge was shocked - for example by the fact that healthnet maintained there was no real harm to the woman from dropping her (since after a couple of months she was able to get care in a state program) or the fact that company documents revealed that employees of healthnet actually got bonuses based on the number of policies the were able to cancel for patients on whom the company was losing money (i.e. sick ones.) http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-fi-insure23feb23,1,2680255.story [latimes.com]
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Re:He who pays for the test owns it (Score:5, Insightful)
- The more intelligent solution is to outlaw discrimination based on pre-existing medical conditions (thus destroying the business model of the insurance industry as it exists now in the US, which wouldn't be a bad thing). The point of the medical industry is to cure people. The point of the medical insurance industry is to make the most money possible. They are contradictory goals for which only legislation can facilitate a more rational change.
And a point from the article:
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Re:He who pays for the test owns it (Score:5, Informative)
Its not rocket science: You can do health care for people or for profit. Not both simultaneously.
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Re:He who pays for the test owns it (Score:5, Interesting)
Best regards,
UTW
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Re:Socialized Medicine, Mandatory DNA Testing (Score:4, Insightful)
That is, profitable.
I see some people from Europe and Canada posting here about how wonderful their respective medical systems are, and how America should move towards a socialized approach for our health care.
Might as well try to institute such a system in Mexico, or any other nation with thoroughly corrupt government and private sectors (like the U.S.) I mean, hell, we've been throwing money at the education system for years (sixty percent of my property tax dollars go to "education") and for all that we're near the bottom of the education heap. Why does anyone believe that throwing vast sums of Federal money at the medical system, thereby subjecting all of us to even more government scrutiny, will have a positive outcome? When will we understand that these people can't be trusted with the power they already have? Yes, I know that countries like Germany have a fine socialized medical system
Besides, people forget that we've already had socialized medicine in the U.S. for decades: it's called Medicare. Do want more of that? Yes, it's only for older people, or those of any age who have specific conditions (such as total renal failure) but it can hardly be pointed to as a successful operation from a cost-benefit perspective. Any national health-care system as proposed by some of our Presidential candidates would, in effect, expand the Medicare tax base to theoretically include everyone. Given the fraud and malfeasance and gross inefficiency of the current Medicare system, I simply don't believe that our government (or our health care providers) can be trusted with even more power than they already have. The way they handled Medicare has conclusively demonstrated that they are incapable of acting honestly and in good faith when it comes to health care.
I'm not saying they'd just make Medicare bigger: they'd probably establish an entirely new bureaucratic organization to handle a national medical system. What I am saying is that any such organization will be just as efficient and trustworthy as the DHS, the TSA or FEMA. It can't help but be anything else, given how our government works today. Furthermore, given the propensity for certain three-letter agencies to ignore their charters and lie to Congress, you can bet that socialized medicine would be a privacy disaster.
We'd probably be better off getting the food lobbies out of Congress and spending some serious money on public education, to teach people how to eat. Hell, if we just got a significant number of people to lay off the fast food it would cut the number of new diabetes and cancer cases. In the long run, if we became a healthier nation overall, we'd have less dependence upon advanced medical services.
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Mod parent neocon troll (Score:5, Interesting)
First, with more and more people who are uninsured or underinsured, the experience of finding oneself with a serious illness and no way to get help without bankrupting yourself and your family is becoming more common. This experience is also entering into the middle class (and even upper middle class) ethos because its not just a poor person's problem anymore.
Second, any idiot with a modicum of intelligence can see that the US health care system is failing the US population. Even those who are insured cannot be guaranteed care when they need it. The US is undergoing an emergency care and on call crisis due to the problems created by uninsurance. If you are a specialist and agree to be on call for a hospital, or you are a hospital who has an ER, or if you are an ER physician on duty in those hospitals, you are bound by the EMTALA law which says you have to provide care for all medical emergencies regardless of ability to pay. This unfunded mandate is pushing emergency care to the breaking point. From 1993 to 2003 in the US, 425 hospital EDs closed their doors; the number of ED visits rose by 26% during the same period (Institute of Medicine, 2006). Moreover try to find that on call neurosurgeon you need to drain your epidural hematoma or the hand specialist to reattach your finger in under 4 hours. Specialists are now refusing to take call because it makes them vulnerable to provide uncompensated care. So while years ago, it was only the poor who suffered, now even the insured are suffering because ERs are overcrowded and specialists are just unavailable. (See what's going on in LA's now as its emergency system implodes if you would like an example.)
Third, (and this is the only thing that has kept me from leaving the US to practice in Canada), I genuinely think the American people are good and want a system that provides people health care just like we provide every child an education and other services like EMS, fire, and police. When bad things happen to others, I think Americans really do want to help. I saw that when I was a chief resident in the ER at Brooklyn's largest trauma center on Sept 11, 2001. We saw it in the actions of individuals and organizations to help NOLA after Katrina when our government stood by with its hand up its ass. Most of us, at heart, are not hateful neocon hawks. However, the hateful neocon hawks have pretty mighty propoganda machines and they were able to fool a lot of people a lot of the time. But eventually we do come around. Witness the phenomena of Evangelical Christians who won't vote Republican because while they don't support abortion rights, or my right to marry my partner, they think that the US's inaction in Darfur, the war in Iraq, the fact that Americans are dying as I type this from preventable diseases, the fact that poor children are abandoned in drug and gun infested warehouses that used to be schools are far worse tragedies than the fact that I have buttsecks with the man I call my husband.
And I would damn rather work in an organization with one of those folks or have one as my neighbor than you. Because she and I would both be Americans who love our country and understand that diversity of beliefs are OK, but that first and foremost we have to ensure that there is social justice, that every child has an education, that every person has health care when they need it, and that our military and our political capital is spent on real problems like resolving the tragedy in Darfur and creating freedom in China rather than creating a profit for Haliburton.
Nick
Institute of Medicine. (2006). Hospital based emergency care: At the breaking point. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
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