Insurance Companies’ Access to Genetic Information: Why Regulation Alone Is Not Enough

Abstract

The background of this paper is the ongoing dismantling of the social insurance systems in favour of commercialisation and privatisation of insurances needed for illness, old age and premature death. This combined with the increased possibility of using genetic testing for differentiating personal insurance premiums has the potentiality of creating a ‘genetic proletariat’ — an uninsurable high-risk population. The common way of handling this problem in Sweden, and many other developed countries around the North Atlantic, has been to regulate insurance companies’ right to ask for and use genetic information in various ways. There is a distinction between partial regulation (that allows insurance companies access to genetic information from genetic tests already made, sometimes only above a specified amount, but not to demand new tests) and total regulation (that forbids insurance companies to ask for or use any genetic information). I will argue that these forms of regulation probably will have adverse consequences given the dismantling of collective social insurance systems. If this is convincing, a better way to solve the problem of an uninsurable high-risk population (and other problems) is to resurrect the collective, obligatory insurance systems in which the individual risk profile does not constitute a basis for premium determination. Both arguments cast in terms of consequences and justice render support for this conclusion.