Risks associated with genetic testing: health insurance discrimination or simply business as usual?

Doctors can test patients for mutations that put them at high risk for hereditary forms of such diseases as breast and ovarian cancer. Even though the opportunities for disease prevention using genetic testing will increase with time, the risks of testing, which include insurance loss and employment discrimination, currently make testing problematic. Some have proposed making use of genetic information in health insurance underwriting illegal. But in the current system of risk-based underwriting, it is hard to imagine that insurance companies will willingly forego access to a growing body of information on risk. If the American public chooses to limit the use of genetic information, a reassessment of current laws or methods of paying for health care will be needed.