The argument about genetic testing is a good one, just not for the conclusion he wants. He points out that if insurance consumers have information about their genetic predisposition to disease that insurance sellers don't have, you will have a problem of adverse selection: people who learn they are likely to get sick will buy a lot of insurance and people who learn they are not likely to get sick will drop their insurance. That will undermine the insurance system. The insurance companies won't be able to pay off the sick if the only people paying in are those who are sick: sick people who wish to collect from insurance schemes depend on healthy people to "lose" their premiums by virtue of staying healthy. The insurance company is a middle man with a lot of expertise in setting prices.
The author draws the conclusion that insurance companies should be allowed to have the same information about genetic predispositions to disease that consumers have so they can adjust the rates they charge to those who are likely to be healthy or sick. But that's not going to help the sick: the companies will try to charge them as much as they anticipate paying out (plus some extra for their services, of course). But what's the point of buying insurance if they're going to do that?
The real lesson is that the healthy have to be forced to join an insurance scheme with the sick. If the healthy can't opt out, that solves the problem. That's socialized medicine, thank you very much.
On a technical note, you need to close the quotation marks in the anchor to FEED. This just goes to show that it's too darn hard to make a link using this software: you have to type it out. Or it shows that we don't know how to use the easy stuff. Either way, get that quotation mark in there and all will be jake.
Posted by Mike Green at May 17, 2001 01:45 PM