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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

I think the underlying issue is real, but the headline seems inflated. Has this ever actually happened to anyone?

I recently bought life insurance and I'm pretty sure they didn't even bother to ask my primary care doctor for her records (though they had the right to), and they certainly didn't ask me about any tests I may have done on my own. (I think they did obtain at least some of my Rx history though. I assume from CVS Caremark.)

Right now I think there's kinda the opposite problem with Long Term Care insurance where people who take a genetic test that shows high risk for e.g. Alzheimer's run out and buy LTC insurance which messes up the risk pool.

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They may nail you later because you didn't disclose something. I know people who have been dropped from their health insurance after years of paying because they forgot to disclose a previous injury. I should add they got dropped when they had a claim. That means the insurance happily took their money until it was time to pay up.

And this affects life insurance, so you wont be alive when they dispute your claim!

I'm pretty confident that I answered every question accurately and that no answers would have changed based on anything I could have learned from a genetic test.

Health insurers were really bad about "prior conditions" before Obamacare. I think life insurance has always been more tightly regulated.

FWIW, my policy says the insurer can only challenge the application within the first two years.

"Health insurers were really bad about "prior conditions" before Obamacare"

It's good to know that the current administration is determined to take us back to those glory days :)

> I think the underlying issue is real, but the headline seems inflated. Has this ever actually happened to anyone?

The time to guard against infringement of your rights is before it happens. Once it's happened … well, we've always done it that way; you should have spoken up before.

Genetic discrimination should probably be illegal in all forms of insurance. I think Long Term Care insurance may then become prohibitively expensive or even impossible to buy on the private market, though.

I think it might already be. A bunch of companies are realizing that Long Term Care insurance is way more expensive than they planned for: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/ge-to-tak.... I wouldn't be surprised if it disappears over the next decade as later-life health care costs continue to spiral upward.

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