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Comment by missosoup | Hacker News Reader

You have no idea how many ways there are to adhere to the letter of that law while ignoring the intent. There are entire multinational businesses built specifically to facilitate these kinds of data exchanges while keeping it technically legal.

The health insurer doesn't need the genome. It just needs a number from 1 to 10 from a 'de-identified' source to multiply their scores by.

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Fair, but they still can't rate my plan with that number.

ACA plan premiums can only be set based on 5 factors: age, location, tobacco use, individual vs. family enrollment, and plan.

Sure, for now. We would all be naiive to believe that insurance companies wouldn't lobby to be able to use other such information continually if they had it until they can use it to charge you more.

Such a strange concept that we say that insurance can't be rated according to significant risk factors.

The state of health insurance in the US would be better described as a "private social health benefit program".

Insurance is effective at protecting people from uncertain financial risks, but the demands of the public have gradually changed the function of health insurance to include many things outside of that.

The question was never "what functions do insurance companies do efficiently?", the question has always been "what health benefits do people deserve?". Unfortunately, these questions have different answers.

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