Genetic Testing in Private Health Insurance

Currently medical insurance companies encourage their customers to use screening tests to help them anticipate and avoid illness. PruHealth, for example offers reduced premiums to customers who have a range of health screens. Advances in medical science are making genetic screening more accessible and it is estimated that in a decade or so it will be easy and cheap to map out chromosomes and assess them for predispositions to genetic conditions. So how will health insurance companies use information from genetic testing?

According to The Times, Gil Baldwin, the managing director of Norwich Union Healthcare says that DNA scans are something that will reduce medical insurance premiums over time. He said,

'The thing about genetic screening is I'm not interested in knowing what your results are. I'm interested that you are interested in going for a screen, because only a madman would get information saying you're at risk of a heart attack and do nothing with that information.

'The benefit to the insurer is in engaging people around the risks they have, and then devising programmes to help them manage those risks. This isn't a matter of knowing more about you so we can calculate your personal risk and charge you appropriate premiums. We'd charge you the same premium, but have a better conversation. In time, that leads to a lower premium.'

In consultation with the government, The Association of British Insurers (ABI) have put genetic testing on hold until 2014 and their 2008 Code of Practise states that 'Insurers will not use information from predictive genetic test results to underwrite Travel insurance, Private Medical Insurance, or any other one-off or annual policy, or for long-term care policies.'

The ABI makes a distinction between predictive tests and diagnostic tests. In the case of diagnostic tests person will have had symptoms and a DNA screening confirms medical suspicion. Predictive tests are used on healthy individuals who are merely wanting to look at their future risks.

Currently predictive tests are used in life insurance but information can only be used by the underwriter to enhance a customers position. For example if there is a negative result which would help to reduce a premium in the case of a poor family history of a disease then this can be disclosed. If a new client already has the results of a predictive test and they are poor then they will be used to asses risk in the same way as any other medical test would.

There is concern that predictive tests will be used by private health insurance companies in the future to preclude individuals from comprehensive and to increase premiums and that this may prevent people from having tests that may help to save their lives.