How so? They point out the difficulty balancing personal privacy and tools to identify criminals who have evaded justice. Just because you don't agree with the relative importance placed on either side doesn't make them dumb or naive.
What makes you naive is if you put any smidegeon of hope into the fact that insurance companies will not hesitate to buy and abuse such data to fuck you over left, right and central then you really are beyond help.
If you want to risk that, fine. But you're also screwing all your relatives in the same swell process.
And that's not only naive and dumb, that's totally reckless.
The solution to that is to abolish or neuter your insurance companies like the us in the rest of the world did. The fact that a private for-profit company decides if you live or die is absurd.
Last I checked, medical and life insurance is a thing everywhere else in the world as well. While a public healthcare system will pay for your treatment, it will not pay for the loss of earnings/business during your stay in the hospital and convalescence, nor will it pay you if you end up with a permanent disability (social security may cover a pittance of the latter).
it will not pay for the loss of earnings/business during your stay in the hospital and convalescence
I can't speak for other countries in Europe. But in Switzerland you have mandatory coverage from your employer.
The employer will pay your salary for a certain amount of time. After that insurance will kick in and pay (usually) 80% for up to a couple of years.
After that invalidity insurance kicks in. That's usually about 60% of your salary until retirement. You can buy added coverage to raise those percentages.
Bankrupcy for medical reasons is pretty much unheard of herearound.
That's why I also stuck the word "neuter" in there. It's not difficult to regulate what insurance companies are allowed to consider. Data brokerage can also be regulated (the GDPR would not allow 23andme to sell genetic data to insurance companies without strict opt-in)
the GDPR would not allow 23andme to sell genetic data to insurance companies without strict opt-in
That's true. But there's a different issue and the very reason why I would never do such testing.
An insurance company cannot enforce a genetic test on you in order to write a policy. What they can and will do, however, is ask you in the questionaire for such a policy if you did a genetic test and if yes they would oblige you to share the results before writing a policy.
The problem here is you can't lie. If you did a test and you deny it and it's proven later that you lied the insurance will refuse coverage.
So it's in your best interest not to get tested at all.
My understanding is that it's very different in the US. Such data is insanely valuable to insurers and that directly translates to the prices they're willing to pay for it.
Unethical? Sure as hell. Illegal? Probably not without a strong legal framework.
I think the level of "corrupt" is up for some debate, but it's pretty inarguable that the US pays substantially more for a system that is objectively worse in many ways.
>the US Healthcare system is second to none in the world
77th or so maybe to some, but definitely not second to anything, sure.
> The actual CARE people in the US get is the best in the world,
No, it's not consistently. The care a very small fraction get is, perhaps. But even for most of the people who get care it's not.
> It is fucking expensive and has issues with how we go about paying for it largely do to government regulations and interference in the market place
The places that provide equal or better outcomes at far lower prices (both per GDP and per capita) don't have less-regulated markets. So, no, I don't think you've identified the actual problem correctly, though I get that that's always going to be the explanation offered by those dogmatically devoted to the religion of laissez-faire.
I Honestly do hope the US does go Single Payer, we will see health care innovation and advancement stop, no new drugs, no new procedures, etc as almost 100% of that is funded by the very people you despise, the American people.
>The care a very small fraction gets is, perhaps. But even for most of the people who get the care it's not.
that is simply not true, most of the studies, rankings all factor in "access" due to price, if you remove price as a factor then there is no better system in the world
>>The places that provide equal or better outcomes at far lower prices (both per GDP and per capita) don't have less-regulated markets. So, no, I don't think you've identified the actual problem correctly,
I have, we have the worst of both systems. We have all the regulations of a Government-run system without the Price controls.
Single-Payer would be cheaper than our current model, it would also provide worse care.
The free market would be the best but I fear that ship has sailed, the world will need to destroy all innovation and collapse the health systems everywhere before anyone will want to try Free market again
Socialism always fails, the one thing keeping every other nations socialist system working is the American system, we pick up the slack, (just like in defense)
That is one of the reasons I become more and more isolationist every year.
> that is simply not true, most of the studies, rankings all factor in "access" due to price
That's because access due to price affects what care people actually get from the system.
> if you remove price as a factor then there is no better system in the world
No, even if you don't consider how ludicrously expensive the US healthcare system is, the outcomes it produces aren't exceptional.
Now, if you mean if you remove the actual effect price has on care the US system would be great, sure, but that's different than removing separate consideration of price as a factor. And impossible, as well.
