Life insurance companies deny coverage to those with cancer genes like BRCA (U.S.) Genetic Literacy Project Ovarian Cancer and Us OVARIAN CANCER and US Ovarian Cancer and Us

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Monday, May 09, 2016

Life insurance companies deny coverage to those with cancer genes like BRCA (U.S.) Genetic Literacy Project



Genetic Literacy Project

 
....Studies do show people are more likely to apply for long term care and life insurance after genetic testing reveals that they carry disease risk genes. Boston-based geneticist Robert Green found that people who found out they have the Alzheimers-related  APOE gene variant are five times more likely to purchase long-term care insurance. That could sway the pool of potential insurance purchasers to be a sicker lot, and undermine how insurers balance their pools with more healthy participants who rarely make a claim in order to stay profitable.  Green writes in the New England Journal of Medicine:
Thus far, we have collectively decided that it is inequitable to discriminate against employees or in the pricing of health insurance but more acceptable to discriminate for products such as life, disability, and long-term care insurance. In defending the right to such discriminatory underwriting, insurers have claimed that if applicants have relevant information that isn’t available to insurers, such as robust genetic risk information, low-risk consumers will drop out of the mix and higher-risk consumers will disproportionately purchase coverage, forcing companies to raise prices and causing a “death spiral” of adverse selection.....

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