The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act will be voted on the floor of the United States Senate on Thursday, April 24. It is expected that the bill will quickly pass through the United States House of Representatives. After that, it will be left for United States President George W. Bush to sign it into law.
Should the bill pass, it would be illegal to discriminate on genetic data. What that would mean is that the insurance companies will neither be allowed to deny health care coverage nor adjust premiums to determine eligibility towards applicants. Regardless of the genetic information, insurance companies would be prohibited by law to discriminate against applicants for all sorts or genetically disposed ailments.
If and when signed into law, this will also be applied to employers. Employers would not be able to use genetic data to hire, fire, assign, and promote employees. In a sense, this is reminiscent of the movie “Philadelphia” with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. However, the employers at the law firm covered up the fact they fired Hanks’ character for having AIDS.
So far an agreement has been made with the bill’s main opponent, Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Under this compromise, the language will be tighter and not loosely interpreted in regards to health care coverage and employment to keep inappropriate or “frivolous” claims from being filed.
However, insurance companies are still allowed to base the coverage and monthly pricing. This has been a joint effort by both Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate. But, this issue has been left in the dark until the start of 2007 where the Democratic Party has won a marginal victory in the 2006 Congressional elections in which they won control of both houses of the United States Congress.
Leave Your Comments