Genetic Profiling, Healthcare, and Insurance
October 23rd, 2008
photo credit: r3v || clsPicture this: You visit your doctor and find out that you have a chronic and potentially serious illness for which you will need medication. With half a dozen different medications which might be appropriate, which should your doctor choose? What if there is no way of knowing in advance which will work best in your case?
That’s an important decision for a doctor, simply because choosing the wrong medication can have negative consequences for patients. Currently, however, the new field of pharmacogenomics – genomics-based medicine – is revolutionizing the way doctors prescribe medicine, leading to an entirely new type of highly personalized healthcare.
Genomics-based Healthcare – Methods and Benefits
It sounds complicated, but the method itself is fairly simple. Variations in our genes often determine that we may respond to certain drugs in different ways. By examining a person’s genetic profile, it will one day be possible to determine exactly how they will respond to various different drugs. With this information, doctors can select the drugs which will prove to be most beneficial, based on the genetic profile of the individual they are treating.
Obviously, using genetic information in this way has the potential to be of huge benefit. The implications are particularly important when you realize that hundreds of thousands of people die every year partly because the medications they are prescribed work in unexpected and dangerous ways.
This isn’t the fault of doctors who prescribe the drugs – currently there is simply no way to know whether a person’s genetic profile will cause such dangerous reactions.
Consequences and Downsides of DNA-based Healthcare
Yes, the potential is there for huge benefits in health care. But what of the consequences in terms of health insurance? What if your genetic profile reveals that you are predisposed to developing type 2 diabetes? Cancer? Naturally you’d have to disclose that information on an insurance application, and what if your insurer decides you’re too high risk? In such cases, you would probably be forced to look into guaranteed-issue health insurance, or even the high-risk coverage provided by your state – which would almost surely be at a higher cost than general plans.
What if your genetic profile also reveals that your body would react adversely to commonly-used and inexpensive medications for the diabetes you are predisposed to develop? Could an insurer refuse to provide you with prescription medication coverage?
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act Comes to the Rescue
Luckily, it may not be as bad as that, as the federal government signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in May 2008. This act prohibits employers and insurance companies from discriminating on the basis of the results of genetic testing. So, if your genetic profile reveals any issues which make you high risk, your insurer is barred from any type of discrimination on the basis of that information.
