4 ms·

Once that happens, it won't be by the backdoor. Insurance companies will offer a "DNA discount" and ask for DNA directly, and simply charge more to anyone who

Once that happens, it won't be by the backdoor. Insurance companies will offer a "DNA discount" and ask for DNA directly, and simply charge more to anyone who refuses, and then grade the amount of "discount" based on the risk profile back from the DNA sample. If you hold out and refuse, you'll simply get lumped in with the riskiest. People love a "discount".

trimethylpurine 3y ago
In the US at least, according to some quick web searching, discounts must apply to the entire pool of insured. (For medical insurance specifically.)
sergers 3y ago
My household mortgage provider, TD Bank Canada, offered me critical illness/death "insurance" for me and my spouse. As we were insuring over a million in the mortgage/loc, I guess they have diff requirements. They sent over their own funded nurse, who collected vitals and blood samples which we signed off them running any number of tests. I should have checked if any clause for DNA. But that's not needed... Insurance is already all over you now. Mostly in past was just a quick questionnaire. Then I was use to be sent to Dr for physical. Now they contracting their own nurses and labs. They probably already collecting your dna
panta 3y ago
taken to the extreme, if complete data availability allowed to predict the future with enough precision, then everyone would pay an insurance premium corresponding to their insured negative events. In practice insurances wouldn't have any reason to exist. The foundational premise of the insurance concept is that risk is spread across every participant in an equal manner.
- clbrmbr 3y ago
  Really important comment! Is having a bad recessive a “pre-existing condition”? Or do genotypes form already legally protected classes? Clearly we need good lawyers here, or careful regulation, or public medical insurance. I hope it doesn’t go the way of car insurance.
  - 0x00_NULL 3y ago
    While this is an interesting idea, no doubt, epigenetics casts major doubt on whether knowing the DNA expression at a particular time is diagnostically useful. Sure. There are some conditions that are purely genetic, but many genes can be switched on and off depending on the environment - or even recoded in the replication process. DNA isn’t as static as we once thought and knowing a person’s DNA is not quite as useful as we imagined. This isn’t as big of a deal as we imagined. It’s going to take some incredible processing to uncover causal patterns, and a huge amount of experimentation to determine whether they are stable against epigenetic changes. In my opinion, this is quite exciting.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > The foundational premise of the insurance concept is that risk is spread across every participant in an equal manner. Applying this broad principle to auto insurance, it isn't doing well. Auto ins is ~mandated. Participants are forced to pay for risk pools they aren't part of. ex: Car repair costs are skyrocketing. Premiums are also skyrocketing, including for people who don't carry collision.
  - plonk 3y ago
    Everyone can make disasters at the wheel though. If you didn’t mandate insurance, there would be victims with no recourse.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      Sure. But insurance companies leverage that mandate; they make people who don't choose (or can't afford) collision policies subsidize people that do. With this, the bargain of shared risk is quietly killed and replaced with exploiting the poor (or frugal) to pay for the non-poor (or lavish).
- nerdix 3y ago
  Why wouldn't insurance have a reason to exist? Even the healthiest people need medical insurance because anyone can experience accidental injury requiring hospitalization and/or on going medical care.
  - panta 3y ago
    Then only insurance for actual accidents would make sense, but even then insurance companies could start analyzing more meticulously the individual probabilities of having accidents: do you have an active lifestyle? you pay a premium; do you practice sports? you pay a premium; travel more than the average human? pay a premium; are you getting older? insurance rate grows exponentially; already had an accident? sorry, you no longer a desirable customer.
  - everforward 3y ago
    This is presuming perfect knowledge; it's a thought experiment. In this hypothetical world, your insurance company does know that in 13 months you're going to get in a car accident that flings a 1.27mm shard of glass into your eye, that it's going to take 27 minutes to complete the surgery that fixes it, that you'll have an infection after that and the first 2 antibiotics won't work but the third one will. It's basically just pointing out that perfect knowledge makes risk 0, and that insurance doesn't make sense in a world with no risk. At that point the question is basically just whether you distribute medical costs evenly across everyone or let there be winners and losers on those costs.
Ancalagon 3y ago
Man that is so dystopian, and I don't disagree with what you're saying will happen at all.

trimethylpurine 3y ago

In the US at least, according to some quick web searching, discounts must apply to the entire pool of insured. (For medical insurance specifically.)

sergers 3y ago

My household mortgage provider, TD Bank Canada, offered me critical illness/death "insurance" for me and my spouse. As we were insuring over a million in the mortgage/loc, I guess they have diff requirements. They sent over their own funded nurse, who collected vitals and blood samples which we signed off them running any number of tests. I should have checked if any clause for DNA. But that's not needed... Insurance is already all over you now. Mostly in past was just a quick questionnaire. Then I was use to be sent to Dr for physical. Now they contracting their own nurses and labs. They probably already collecting your dna

panta 3y ago

taken to the extreme, if complete data availability allowed to predict the future with enough precision, then everyone would pay an insurance premium corresponding to their insured negative events. In practice insurances wouldn't have any reason to exist. The foundational premise of the insurance concept is that risk is spread across every participant in an equal manner.

clbrmbr 3y ago
Really important comment! Is having a bad recessive a “pre-existing condition”? Or do genotypes form already legally protected classes? Clearly we need good lawyers here, or careful regulation, or public medical insurance. I hope it doesn’t go the way of car insurance.
- 0x00_NULL 3y ago
  While this is an interesting idea, no doubt, epigenetics casts major doubt on whether knowing the DNA expression at a particular time is diagnostically useful. Sure. There are some conditions that are purely genetic, but many genes can be switched on and off depending on the environment - or even recoded in the replication process. DNA isn’t as static as we once thought and knowing a person’s DNA is not quite as useful as we imagined. This isn’t as big of a deal as we imagined. It’s going to take some incredible processing to uncover causal patterns, and a huge amount of experimentation to determine whether they are stable against epigenetic changes. In my opinion, this is quite exciting.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> The foundational premise of the insurance concept is that risk is spread across every participant in an equal manner. Applying this broad principle to auto insurance, it isn't doing well. Auto ins is ~mandated. Participants are forced to pay for risk pools they aren't part of. ex: Car repair costs are skyrocketing. Premiums are also skyrocketing, including for people who don't carry collision.
- plonk 3y ago
  Everyone can make disasters at the wheel though. If you didn’t mandate insurance, there would be victims with no recourse.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    Sure. But insurance companies leverage that mandate; they make people who don't choose (or can't afford) collision policies subsidize people that do. With this, the bargain of shared risk is quietly killed and replaced with exploiting the poor (or frugal) to pay for the non-poor (or lavish).
nerdix 3y ago
Why wouldn't insurance have a reason to exist? Even the healthiest people need medical insurance because anyone can experience accidental injury requiring hospitalization and/or on going medical care.
- panta 3y ago
  Then only insurance for actual accidents would make sense, but even then insurance companies could start analyzing more meticulously the individual probabilities of having accidents: do you have an active lifestyle? you pay a premium; do you practice sports? you pay a premium; travel more than the average human? pay a premium; are you getting older? insurance rate grows exponentially; already had an accident? sorry, you no longer a desirable customer.
- everforward 3y ago
  This is presuming perfect knowledge; it's a thought experiment. In this hypothetical world, your insurance company does know that in 13 months you're going to get in a car accident that flings a 1.27mm shard of glass into your eye, that it's going to take 27 minutes to complete the surgery that fixes it, that you'll have an infection after that and the first 2 antibiotics won't work but the third one will. It's basically just pointing out that perfect knowledge makes risk 0, and that insurance doesn't make sense in a world with no risk. At that point the question is basically just whether you distribute medical costs evenly across everyone or let there be winners and losers on those costs.

Ancalagon 3y ago

Man that is so dystopian, and I don't disagree with what you're saying will happen at all.