DNA Testing and the Fear of the Health Insurers

I realize that this site is titled “Aetna Sucks”, but part of what I’m hoping to do here is to highlight some of the ways that America’s health care system is truly effed up.

The health care market is one in which patients are afraid of being screwed over by their insurers, patients are afraid of what their doctors might disclose to the insurance companies, and health insurance underwriters seek to find any reason to get off a high risk.

Consider, for example, a story which appeared in Sunday’s New York Times on the subject of DNA testing:

The first, much-anticipated benefits of personalized medicine are being lost or diluted for many Americans who are too afraid that genetic information may be used against them to take advantage of its growing availability.

In some cases, doctors say, patients who could make more informed health care decisions if they learned whether they had inherited an elevated risk of diseases like breast and colon cancer refuse to do so because of the potentially dire economic consequences.

Others enter a kind of genetic underground, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars of their own money for DNA tests that an insurer would otherwise cover, so as to avoid scrutiny. Those who do find out they are likely or certain to develop a particular genetic condition often beg doctors not to mention it in their records.

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