Under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Privacy Act, companies cannot ask employees to take gene tests<br />and cannot use any such results in employment decisions; insurers are not permitted to require gene tests or to use the results in coverage decisions.<br />At the moment, companies selling long-term care insurance — unlike medical insurers — are permitted to ask about health status<br />and take future health into consideration when deciding whom to insure and how much to charge.<br />Yet even if just a minority of 23andMe customers decided to game the current insurance system, “it’s enough to perturb the market,” said Dr. Robert<br />Cook-Deegan, a professor at the school for the future of innovation in society at Arizona State University, who has studied the issue.<br />If that happens, said Mark Rothstein, the director of the bioethics institute at the University of Louisville’s medical school,<br />even more people with Alzheimer’s will end up on Medicaid, with the federal government paying for their nursing home care.<br />But for companies selling long-term care insurance, these tests could be a disaster, sending risky patients<br />in search of policies even as those with fewer risks shy away, damaging an already fragile business.<br />New Gene Tests Pose a Threat to Insurers -<br />By GINA KOLATAMAY 12, 2017<br />Pat Reilly had good reason to worry about Alzheimer’s disease: Her mother had it,<br />and she saw firsthand the havoc it could wreak on a family, much of it financial.
