New Bill Would Allow Employers To Demand Genetic Testing From Workers (businessinsider.com) 397
capedgirardeau quotes a report from Business Insider: A little-noticed bill moving through the U.S. Congress would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employers see that genetic and other health information. Giving employers such power is now prohibited by U.S. law, including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic tests are part of a "workplace wellness" program. The bill, HR 1313, was approved by a House committee on Wednesday, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed. The 2008 genetic law prohibits a group health plan -- the kind employers have -- from asking, let alone requiring, someone to undergo a genetic test. It also prohibits that specifically for "underwriting purposes," which is where wellness programs come in. "Underwriting purposes" includes basing insurance deductibles, rebates, rewards, or other financial incentives on completing a health risk assessment or health screenings. In addition, any genetic information can be provided to the employer only in a de-identified, aggregated form, rather than in a way that reveals which individual has which genetic profile. There is a big exception, however: As long as employers make providing genetic information "voluntary," they can ask employees for it. Under the House bill, none of the protections for health and genetic information provided by GINA or the disabilities law would apply to workplace wellness programs as long as they complied with the ACA's very limited requirements for the programs. As a result, employers could demand that employees undergo genetic testing and health screenings.
Those emails, though (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom.
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The committee is not the entire House. If you think all GOP are going to support it you're insane. If you think all Dems will oppose it, let's wait till the bribes get handed out.
Re:Those emails, though (Score:5, Informative)
No, the ones who are in vulnerable districts will be given a pass, but only after they know they have enough Republican votes to pass it. This phenomenon even has a name. It's called the "Hastert Rule", proudly named after its inventor, a long-time Republican House leader who was also a pedophile and is currently in prison.
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Yes, but it's not like he had his own email server!
The same with Senator Peter King - he raised money for terrorists, but no email server, so he's OK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._King#Support_for_the_IRA)
Re:Those emails, though (Score:4, Insightful)
Mishandling highly classified documents and running a private email server to avoid freedom of information laws is the bit you missed out. Perhaps the Dems should have voted for the anti-Establishment candidate in the primaries rather than crowning Queen Hillary and then perhaps we'd not be faced with four years of that orange lunatic.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Those emails, though (Score:5, Informative)
He said what was "unprecedented" actually was Clinton's exclusive use of private email and her own Internet service provider in lieu of an official account "so that the records of her email account would reside solely within her personal control at home." That means "she managed successfully to insulate her official emails, categorically, from the FOIA, both during her tenure at State and long after her departure from it — perhaps forever." He called that "a blatant circumvention of the FOIA by someone who unquestionably knows better.
It is certain that she didn't like email because of the risk of investigation, see this video clip [youtube.com].
All of this really doesn't matter anymore though, it's in the past and more an issue for historians than anything.
Hastert Rule googled + Msg to Robert Mercer (Score:2, Informative)
"Under House rules, the Speaker schedules floor votes on pending legislation. The Hastert Rule says that the Speaker will not schedule a floor vote on any bill that does not have majority support within his or her party — EVEN IF THE MAJORITY OF THE MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE would vote to pass it"
So the speaker subverts the majority of the votes using his position to prevent votes on bills not supported by his party.
And now we have a President that Americans didn't vote for, they voted by clear majority fo
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He weas acquited of all charges (Score:3, Informative)
Furthermore while there was allegation
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Two women who were his employees. Note that when that sort of thing happened in industry, it was a slam-dunk for a sexual harassment suit. But people REALLY like Bill. Enough that they gave him a pass on something that would've gotten any CEO in the country in trouble....
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Two women who were his employees. Note that when that sort of thing happened in industry, it was a slam-dunk for a sexual harassment suit. But people REALLY like Bill. Enough that they gave him a pass on something that would've gotten any CEO in the country in trouble....
You must have missed the consensual part. If Lewinsky was harassed or raped by Mr Clinton, or otherwise forced to engage in sexual activity. Especially since there were at least 9 times this happened, it is pretty hard to argue that it wasn't consensual.
Even in the liberal hotbed where I last worked, if a female employee enters into a consensual romantic relationship with her supervisor, or vice versa, the subordinate is transferred to a different department, outside of the chain of command. No one is fi
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You earned a Troll vote already? Looks like the downmodders are staying in tonight.
The way things are these days, I wouldn't be surprised if people weren't modded down before they finish typing.
I predict this will hit -1 within 5 minutes of posting.
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True.
But I think what is going to eventually happen is that DNA tests will all be done at Birth, and all hospital visits as a matter of screening for potential genetic diseases and proactively treating them rather than waiting for them to manifest.
However our current knowledge of DNA is not sufficient to actually go "you will get cancer in 5 years because you have gen sequence XYZ", it's not even reliable enough to predict hair or eye color, just a very large margin of error of "you say you have hazel eyes,
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The committee is not the entire House. If you think all GOP are going to support it you're insane. If you think all Dems will oppose it, let's wait till the bribes get handed out.
So what you're saying is there is still time to make this another example of the Democrat's utter moral bankruptcy? Thank Gawd, I was getting worried there. I'll get back to you after I talk to Kellyanne. She'll have the straight scoop - probably something Obama or FDR did.
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...on their clothes. Pardon me if that was meat to be the joke.
That joke needed more meat. And cue the mother jokes
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Re:Yes those emails (Score:5, Informative)
The emails were a felony only in your imagination. If the Republicans keep pulling shit like this they will become even more irrelevant in reality than you imagine the other party is.
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Irrelevant ?
3/4 of the state governments
The House
The Senate with possible super majority in the Senate by 2018
and the presidency
Somehow I don't think that word means what you think it does. BTW looking at those numbers you might want to acquaint yourself with Article V of the constitution so you don't look stupid when reality starts smacking you upside the head.
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So they're a felony for Pence then, is what you're saying.
And it's a much worse felony, presumeably, that President Trump communicates about governance related issues using his unsecured Android phone.
Hypocrisy of the highest order.
The whole email affair was a mountain made out of a mole hill to scam gullible people into voting for someone who wants f*cking corporations to have the right to demand genetic testing of employees if it will notch up their profit one notch.
F*ck people are stupid. Is there anothe
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So they're a felony for Pence then, is what you're saying.
No. Because the two situations aren't even remotely comparable. Which you know.
President Trump communicates about governance related issues using his unsecured Android phone.
Citation based on something other than a whiny liberal fake news blog, please.
The whole email affair was a mountain made out of a mole hill
No, it was an example of one of the most senior people in the federal government deliberately conducting official business on a poorly secured internet-connected mail server she kept in her house. And then failing to turn over all of that data on the day she left office, as required by law. And deleting thousands of federal records while under subpoe
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To be fair (to the US, not Hillary), Hillary did effectively lose her job and prospects of future employment over the email scandal and the dirt she was hiding in general. Hillary Clinton will never be president of the United States.
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no, hes using hte standard response for when someone posts a bunch of made up bullshit as if it were facts.
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F*ck people are stupid. Is there another planet with intelligent life?
Wow! You mean that you know a planet with intelligent life?
Would you mind sharing with us its location?
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which would have exposed her soliciting bribes and other felonies.
In other words, if the facts don't say what you want, you'll make shit up to justify your views. That never happened, there's no proof or even circumstantial evidence. You made your decisions and are note justifying them post hoc.
Re:Yes those emails (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you say SJWs aren't a thing?
Because they're not. It's become a catch-phrase dogwhistle used to shout down arguments. Like: You said Y which makes you an SJW. You're an SJW, and SJWs do X therefore you believe X. And various other things. It's used as nothing else other than a random grab-bag mishmash of "shit I hate on the internet".
AmiMojo's sig qouting an AC has it nailed: someone I don't like and by the way I'm a fuckwit.
Please supply another definition if you disagree, but I've yet to see a remotely meaningful definition that fits the rather broad and perverse set of things SJWs have been accused of doing.
No one but him (a white guy) was offended but the major UK retailer caved just in case a shitstorm ensued.
Companies care desperately about PR. Welcome to the vaguely modern world.
No one but him
If you want to cherry pick the craziest crazy you can find, go ahead, I'm sure I can find equally crazy people (or more so). That doesn't really prove anything.
was offended
Speculation. As far as you know, no one but him complained, but you're speculating on people's internal mental state. Given that there wasn't a huge outcry, it's reasonable to assume that not _many_ people were offended. I've no idea how many people even saw it. I'm a regular Metro reader and I hadn't seen that article until you posted the link.
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What a pity that they deleted the evidence before the hackers got hold of the REST of the emails.
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So why isn't she being charged now that she's political roadkill?
No answer?
Maybe it wasn't just the political connections then but it just being something that was too trivial to go after for Rice, Powell and so many others before and including Clinton.
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No, they don't run the NRA. Weirdo.
The weird thing is this traitor is running the NRA (http://nraontherecord.org/oliver-north/).
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all youve done is describe yourself.
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8 years ago, the Democrats held the Presidency, both Houses and 57% of governorships. Yet here we are.
If you're looking for "lying, partisan piles of shit", give Ted Cruz & Paul Ryan (among others) a call and ask them what Cheeto-flavored jizz tasted like
Re:Yes those emails (Score:5, Insightful)
8 years ago, the Democrats held the Presidency, both Houses and 57% of governorships. Yet here we are.
This is part of the normal political pendulum. People become disillusioned with whatever party is in power because problems aren't being solved. So they vote the other guys in, and then slowly realize that the other party doesn't have any solutions either.
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Fine, but at least my chosen party didn't just VOTE TO LET YOUR EMPLOYER FORCE YOU TO TAKE A GENETIC TEST SO YOU CAN BE DISCRIMINATED BASED ON THE GENES THAT MAKE YOU YOU.
I mean, fucking Christ man.
And yes, slashdot. I know it's like yelling. That's because I'm yelling here. It'd be nice if we weren't still stuck with the same terrible filters Rob wrote two decades ago, but I guess we're not.
Re:Yes those emails (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh, blaming an enemy for his opponent's practices. If only the French were strong enough to defeat the Nazis, then we'd never have had world war II, so therefore France should pay for all of Germany's reparations. And then opposing a nutbag of conspiracy theories makes one partisan, which somehow ruins a republic, so you need to be partisan for my side so we're not partisan and lacking in integrity and somehow all of the problems in today's society will fix themselves without my dedicating an iota of thought.I love the acrobatic logic, truly.
Now, hmm. A moron of a president who doesn't know the first thing about politics, a chamber with a brand of conservatives dedicated to opposing the moderates in their own party, widespread differences in view with no interest in attempting any sort of reconciliation, occupying a number of incredibly unpopular views while making promises they know they can't keep, having lost the culture war 20 years ago and losing more each day, having virtually no sway with all of the increasing voter demographics, and being hopelessly out of touch with their own voters on topics such as healthcare, and uh, yeah. I am hugely afraid of all the stupid and damaging legislation that could be passed in the next 4 years. I am not at all worried they'll stay in power after that at the rate they're going, and if they keep shooting themselves in the foot by making policies that hurt their own voters the most, that might not even take four years.
The bigger question I have for you is, what about them makes you want to support them?
Re:Yes those emails (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everybody is as rational as you. If you bought the propaganda hook, line and sinker then you're emotionally invested and the current government can do nothing wrong.
Ideals regarding decency (Score:3)
That requires an assumption that they had ideals regarding decency which required compromise. More likely, their ideals of decency fit right in with taking healthcare away from sick people, raising the prices at big-box stores, bombing / invading anyone handy, telling women what they may and may not do with their own bodies, controlling who uses what bathroom because (cough) "decency", interfering with personal li
Yes, there's a fire (Score:5, Insightful)
If your house is on fire, you get a bucket. You don't give the Joker an unlimited supply of napalm, some matches, and point him at your front door.
I get that they were so bewildered by right wing agitprop and the sabotage that Comey engaged in just before the vote that they ended up feeling that way. I also get that this was both a highly inaccurate representation of what was really going on, and that now, post-error, confirmation bias drives people to claim they were justified when it is patently obvious that they were not. Rational behavior is not generally the rule of the day when someone has committed a huge screwup, a fact Trump voters now must eventually face.
I have often discussed Clinton's shortcomings, which are many. As are those of the system she operates within in the usual manner of a bought-and-paid for politician. But compared to Trump who is both an idiot and a threat to the country's ultimate stability, she's a genius and a patriot. Voting for Trump "because Clinton" inevitably means you didn't understand one or the other of the two candidates, or possibly both. Some of that is because of crazytarded activity on the part of Drudge, Breitbart, Fox News and so forth. But some of it is because people were too lazy to do their own fact checking. And some, of course, because the Gaussian goes quite a distance to the left before "you can't vote" shows up as a differentiator.
Barring impeachment, which really isn't all that likely, we're in for a minimum of two years of continuing lies, idiotic behavior, and structural damage to the system that will reach into people lives and do very serious harm -- as it has already been doing.
Likely it'll get fixed, inasmuch as (a) Trump lost the actual vote, only gaining office because of the duty-abrogating machinations of the electoral college, which provides us with the incontrovertible fact that the majority of people were against him becoming president; and (b) at this point, no one is guessing if Trump is as big an idiot in real life office as the idiot he was playing on television. Now there is no doubt. So odds are excellent that there's going to be quite a backlash come 2018.
But it's still going to be a rough couple of years.
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Perhaps if you truly dislike things like this bill
So, you think employers should be able to perform genetic testing on their employees? This is the party of "individual liberty?"
What a joke.
Individual liberty and smaller government. So they keep saying
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It's sort of true if they are pushing for an absolute monarchy - one individual with all the liberty.
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Oh bullshit, democracy rules. One man, one vote, and that man is Mr. President for Life, an ordinary man who will represent you in the small government.
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Small government Republicans exist, here and there, but are hardly the establishment. Trump seems intent on reducing the scope of government though. Actions need to follow words, but he might actually make some government departments smaller for once. Wouldn't that be shocking.
The future is now thanks to science (Score:2)
OK (Score:2)
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Slightly less than it's worth.
That's the point. Employers get to legally discriminate against potential and actual employees who have a genetic disadvantage in order to save money on insurance premiums.
BS summary (Score:3, Informative)
The linked article can't be read if an adblocker is active.
The current state of the law:
Employees who refuse to participate in an employer wellness program can be charged up to 50% more for employer-provided health insurance.
If genetic testing is part of the wellness program then employees have to voluntarily authorize the genetic test. If an employee participates in the wellness program but declines included genetic testing then they can't be penalized with the higher insurance premiums.
The new state of the law, if this bill passes:
Employees who refuse genetic testing that is part of a wellness program can be considered non-participants in the wellness program and be charged the higher insurance premiums.
The comment in the summary that the new bill would "...let employers see that genetic and other health information." is the current state of the law as it relates to wellness programs (Work wellness programs put employee privacy at risk [cnn.com]). There is nothing in the new bill that suddenly decreases patient/employee privacy.
"Mandatory" wellness programs, themselves, were controversial and lacked privacy protections when the Democrats insisted everyone participate. They're no less controversial today as the Republicans expand those wellness programs with additional components.
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Fake news ahoy! (Score:5, Informative)
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Alternative facts. It figures. Over the years it's actually been a relatively bipartisan support for the programs but also limiting them to defend privacy.
Here's an interesting article from a critical perspective: http://www.politico.com/agenda... [politico.com]
Gattaca (Score:5, Interesting)
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The problem is educators keep wanting to make results fit policy and share good grades with very average students so they all get into university.
To some spending on books, computers, having smaller class sizes, using educational robot kits, buying more computers will make very average students very smart.
A good educational environment can only make even the most below average students smarter. Any
Re:Gattaca (Score:5, Insightful)
Standardized testing and exams should have filtered most by merit before university over the past decades.
no. Standardized testing just isn't that good. It correlates well with success in America, because y'all so obsessed with it that you make good performance a requirement for success, so it becomes self fulfilling.
The problem is educators keep wanting
Nope. That's the domain of politicians and whoever they stuff into the upper echelons of the relevant organisations. Actual teachers seem to despise the testing obsession since it's stressful for everyone, and a pointless waste of time.
Most of the smart nations mix in a bit of an IQ test with their standardized testing and just never have to face such issues.
That's just gibberish. IQ tests are not a panacea which actually do anything at all. The only thing they reliably predict is performance on IQ tests. They're also poorly correlated with success because they don't test anything particularly useful and emphasise speed over depth. Also, the country work abort the highest rate of top rated universities per capita doesn't do standardised testing. It ain't perfect bet there's nothing nearly so silly all stuffing IQ tests into the exams.
You can't fix social mobility with IQ tests. Hell you can't fix ANYTHING with IQ tests.
Re:Gattaca (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't fix social mobility with IQ tests. Hell you can't fix ANYTHING with IQ tests.
My cousin was sent to a special needs class which in Germany at the time effectively destroyed any hope you had of ever getting into a University. This was done on the basis of an analysis of his grades and an IQ test. He ended up being sent to a vocational school and graduated as a plumber because the specialists in classifying humans by IQ declared that with his limited intelligence a lowly plumber was the most he could ever hope to aspire to. He eventually escaped this system of human quality classification after he graduated by completing a business degree at a private school. He now owns a big plumbing company and by big I mean the kind of company that bids for substantial contracts like doing the plumbing large office buildings and factories. I have seen enough similar examples for me to conclude that IQ tests are at best an extremely inaccurate instrument and at worst completely useless.
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I have seen enough similar examples for me to conclude that IQ tests are at best an extremely inaccurate instrument and at worst completely useless.
Chalk one up for me if you like too. The 11+ exam in the UK (used to choose who goes to the selective state schools, a.k.a Grammar schools[*]) is more or less an IQ test; the questions are of a similar sort. In the practice tests I was scoring something like 25%, which was at the special needs level. My dad was similar and I think could get a solid 90 on IQ tes
Re:Gattaca (Score:5, Funny)
Hire only smart, healthy workers (Score:2)
But what to do with all the failed average applicants who still demand full employment?
The genetic test result can then sort all applicants who have no skill but still have to be considered.
Finally a way to not have to consider a lot of applicants for a reason other than saying they are lack skills and further education at a top university has not helped.
A work force thats smart and healthy can be hired without the need to explain why all average applicants
voluntary (Score:5, Funny)
The eye gouging program is entirely voluntary.
Employees can qualify for not having premiums doubled by simply removing an eye. It's not our fault, but our fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value. And you'll still be able to see if you were responsible and maintained two healthy eyes prior to the program. It won't reduce our healthcare costs if you join the program, but it will reduce our payroll costs if you fail to qualify for the discount.
Rest assured that you can't be penalized under current law if the eyeball you submit for testing is defective in any way, but should the legal landscape change we may be forced to re-evaluate the policy.
Have a nice day
next thing (Score:2)
slavery is introduced again....
When will this shit finally end?
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To bad the former vice president Joe Biden really did say GOP was bringing back slavery with ' 'Put Y'all Back in Chains' .
Remember in 2018.. (Score:2)
Keep voting GOP candidates in...
Sooner or later, give them enugh rope and they'll kill off their voters.
I can't wait to see republicans who lose their job due to "private" genetic testing who then vote republican's because they don't have jobs.
And the democrats are not nearly as bad. They are not as good as they could be but they are not even in the same league as the Republicans when it comes to being willing to let people just flat out suffer and die.
For god's sake, make abortion illegal so the republica
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The "nanny staters for freedom" will just find some other way to poke into everyone's bedrooms just like similar groups do in places where abortion is still illegal. They need an "other" to demonise and attack or they just look like a bunch of rich kid bullies that never grew up.
get rid of employer health plans (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest problem with the US health insurance is the way it's tied to employment: it means that people end up in weird employment-based risk pools, that they lose health care when they lose their jobs, and that people don't get the same kind of tax breaks when insured on their own.
There are plenty of the proverbially "advanced nations" that have private health care instead of "single payer"; however, they usually have private health plans that aren't tied to employers. That's what Congress should fix, first by giving individuals the same kind of tax breaks as employers for health plans, and then by gradually phasing out employer-based health plans altogether.
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Good to see you're still a complete moron.
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Congratulations for getting to the historical root of the problem.
I'd further like to see no tax benefit at all to having health insurance, but your proposal is a huge step in the right direction.
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Just like the mortgage interest deduction. But it's politically impossible to get rid of it: it's a redistribution to the most powerful political group in the US, the middle class.
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All to make them more obedient slaves...
This "we own you" crap (Score:3)
Why are employment and health care even conflated? (Score:3)
I was manager of a small business when we instituted employer-provided health care. The operating premise is that by combining your employees into an insurance pool, it stabilizes both the premiums paid into the pool (one person could quit their job, but it's highly unlikely all your employees will quit their jobs at the same time), as well as the payouts due to employees getting sick (one person can get sick, but it's highly unlikely all your employees will get sick at the same time). But a pool is a pool. Unless your employees are uncharacteristically healthy or unhealthy, there's no statistical difference between a pool of employees, and a pool of random people who bought their own health insurance (out of pocket or using vouchers from their employer).
Preexisting conditions. (Score:3)
The purpose of this bill is to bypass the ACA's current protection mechanism against discrimination due to preexisting conditions. Currently, we know very little about what sections of our DNA actually does (with a few exceptions) and even less about how sections are activated. How we "know" what risk factors you have via DNA is strictly a statistical analysis and based on observation rather than investigations into a particular gene's function. So really, this just gives insurance companies a blank check to claim any bullshit they want to change people with preexisting conditions. The irony here is that your DNA is the very first condition for coming into existence!
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What insurance companies do is statistical analysis. If they look at say car accidents they don't care what it is about being 18, male and driving a sports car that makes you more accident prone than 35, female and driving a soccer mom car. They just want to measure how much and charge you a premium. If you're genetically pre-disposed for a lot of costly illnesses it's the same thing, it's not "bullshit" it's 100% real.
Of course there's almost nothing you can do about it, we all have DNA and there's very fe
Under handed tactics. (Score:2)
Insurance industry should fight this (Score:2)
won't matter (Score:3)
two way street (Score:3)
And I could demand that the employer go fsck themselves sideways. There's this still lingering and weird and unhealthy (speaking of
Maybe this sounds a bit idealistic, but acting like a powerless workforce victim will actually get you closer to becoming one.
Tool For Trouble (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another move to a corporate/police state (Score:3)
Meanwhile Trump distracts the press with nonsense and everyone falls for that distraction.
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but employers often give you discounts or money for an HSA if you do the program
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Which obviously would NOT include racial markers given the extreme reactions of our society to anything "racist".
But given the high percentage of Aspies in the field... you're screwed.
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If you decline to participate, they can boost your insurance premiums by 30%-50%.
Workplace wellness programs make some sense - but there's absolutely no need to involve genetic testing. Has Breitbart been telling them you can catch congenital ugliness from your co-workers or something?
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I would be soooo tempted to bribe the lab tech (who probably doesn't give a shit) and give the lab a vial of my dog's blood .....
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Please get your dog ready, we are coming to take possession due to cruelty.
The ASPCA
https://www.aspca.org/ [aspca.org]
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That is really what the last election was about: whose interest would the President break the law in order to promote. Hillary, who stood foursquare for the political establishment, or Trump, who proclaimed himself as oppo
A one man scare campaign (Score:2)
Above poster, you'll scare yourself when you come down from whatever you are on and read what you have written. "Democrats are responsible for Trump being in the White House"? OMFG that's funny.
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GP is right, the Democrats are responsible for Trump being in the White House. The short of it is that the party's chosen (chosen by the party officials than the voters, to be specific) candidate spent over a billion dollars on a campaign running against a candidate looked down on as a bad joke, and still managed to blow it. Even worse, according to the Podesta e-mails this was the candidate they wanted to run against.
A slightly longer answer is that the Clinton campaign outspent Trump 2:1 in a determined
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The point of my original post was that blaming this bill on Breitbart is like blaming the voters in California for Bernie Sanders being in the Senate.
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It finds the people who are not Nordic enough to be true citizens of the great new utopia.
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Nordic people are less likely to have lactose intolerance, so the test can consist simply of giving the employee a glass of full fat milk and monitoring bathroom breaks. No intrusive measures or expensive lab facilities required.
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If you decline to participate, they can boost your insurance premiums by 30%-50%.
With all the money spent playing political and legal games over legislation regarding insurance premium regulations, we probably could have funded a socialized healthcare system by now for many years.
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Hi! It's me, your best buddy from high school. I would like to get in touch and pay you a visit. You still live with your mom, right?
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Wrong. In the new economy, what one person receives without working for, another AI guided robot must work for without receiving, and one automated-system owner must receive a slightly smaller profit than the insane profit they would have received making lots of valuable things with almost no human employees to pay.
Re:Republican Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
The ACA was a tax based on the belief that everybody has a right to life. Thanks to your higher premiums, I was able to get free coverage after so many years without insurance. Thank you for involuntarily saving my life. Sorry you had to drive a slightly worse car because of it.
Re:Republican Freedom (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for voting Democrat in 2008 and 2012 - you helped more than double my insurance costs
You can blame lobbyists and the Republican filibuster on earlier attempts for single payer. Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was a compromise reached through negotiation with insurance lobbyists. It is modeled on the earlier Massachusetts Accountable Health Care act (Romneycare), and mainly adds requirements for insurance providers to cover preventative care and has provisions to expand Medicare. But the rest of it remain the same, it's an expansion of a system that Massachusetts already has operated successfully.
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Uh huh... right.. and guess which party is the one who created this bill? Whatever nonsense your spouting, so far as far as actions go, only one party has been doing that. So please piss off with your both sides bullshit.
Anyone who uses the "Everyone is bad, and they al agree" excuse is promoting that they are perfectly accepting of the bad behavior.
It takes a secial kind of stupid to say that a bill introduced by one party, supported unanimously and opposed by every member of the other party means tat both parties are in agreement.
Then again, America's mistaken idea that the thoughts of the stupid are equal to the thoughts of the intelligent are exactly why we have fucked ourselves severely. AC is the epitome of the