Question

Question of Ethics: Genetic Screening You work for a very large company. If you are healthy, their insurance handlers require you to pay $100.00/month in insurance fees. However, their policy is if you or a family member is susceptible to a genetic disease that could cost them a lot of money in the future, you must pay $1000.00/month. This would be to cover potential future medical costs and not cause other peoples insurance fees (premiums) to rise.Two Possible Scenarios1. You are a carrier for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Your future baby could require expensive treatment (nursing, schooling, etc.) which will be paid for by your company’s group insurance.2. You find you have the recessive allele that causes breast cancer. There is a good chance you will need expensive surgery, medication and treatment in the next 10 years.WHAT IS YOUR OPINION?a) Should the insurance company have access to your genetic test results immediately after you are hired and immediately make you pay higher fees than everyone else, keeping other people’s fees low?ORb) Your genome is none of their business. They do not have a right to see it. You should only have to pay the fee of a healthy individual until you get sick, but that will raise everyone’s monthly insurance fees (premiums).​

Answer 1

The ethics of insurance companies accessing genetic test results to adjust fees involves balancing privacy concerns and the equitable distribution of healthcare costs. GINA helps protect individuals against the use of their genetic information for insurance discrimination.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question of whether an insurance company should have access to genetic test results for the purpose of determining insurance fees is a complex ethical issue. The argument for the insurance company's access is based on the premise of lowering health-care costs for all by ensuring that those with a higher risk pay more. However, there are significant concerns regarding privacy issues and the potential for discrimination.

Under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA), insurers are prohibited from denying coverage or increasing premiums based on genetic information, which protects individuals from having their genomic data used against them. Moreover, ethical considerations dictate the need for protecting the privacy of an individual's genome, and the sense of fairness suggests that health risks should be shared across the population rather than burdening those with genetic predispositions.