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We recently received two different submissions relating to HR 1313, the "Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act". HR 1313 is a new bill in Congress that will impact privacy protections for people's genetic information.
House Republicans Would Let Employers Demand Workers' Genetic Test Results
A bill that passed its first hurdle yesterday in Congress threatens to take away genetic privacy protections put in place with the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) of 2008. H.R.1313, the "Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act," might instead be called the "telling on relatives" ruling.
According to GINA, employers can't use genetic information to hire, fire, or promote an employee, or require genetic testing, and health insurers can't require genetic tests nor use results to deny coverage. The law clearly defines genetic tests – DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, metabolites – and genetic information –genetic test results and family history of a genetic condition.
Nancy J. Cox, PhD, ASHG president, in a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, provides a frightening overview:
"If enacted, this legislation would undermine fundamentally the privacy provisions of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It would allow employers to ask employees invasive questions about their and their families' health, as well as genetic tests they and their families have undergone. It would further allow employers to impose stiff financial penalties on employees who choose to keep such information private, thus empowering employers to coerce their employees into providing their health and genetic information."
http://blogs.plos.org/dnascience/2017/03/09/saving-gina-is-genetic-privacy-imperiled/
Give Us Your Genes or Pay 50% More for Company Healthcare
Force employees to take DNA tests for bosses? We've got a new law to make that happen, beam House Republicans - Give us your genes or pay 50% more for company healthcare:
[...] House bill HR 1313, dubbed the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, was introduced by Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and would allow employers to request genetic data from workers – and their family members – if they want their health insurance covered. It wouldn't be mandatory, but those who refuse could see their health costs rise by up to 50 per cent.
Genetic information is protected under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The proposed legislation would do an end-run around these protections.
"Preserving wellness programs and ensuring employers have the legal certainty they need to help lower health care costs for workers must be part of the process of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with patient-centered solutions," the bill's fact sheet [PDF] reads. "The Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act (HR 1313) reaffirms existing law to allow employee wellness programs to be tied to responsible financial incentives."
From the Wikipedia page of Virginia Foxx who introduced this bill:
Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act (H.R. 1313; 115th Congress) – Foxx introduced this legislation that among other things, eliminates the genetic privacy protections of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (Public Law 110–233) and which allows 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.
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/us_legislation_forcing_employees_genetic_info/
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:42PM (4 children)
Ugh no way. Worst idea ever. How about interviewing the person? Letting them go if it doesn't work out?
The phrase "mountain out of a mole hill" seems fitting. There is no widespread problem for this solution to fix, just a massive privacy violation tied to dystopian futures FOR PROFITZ!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @06:28PM (3 children)
Look at things from another perspective. When you're hiring for anything like a desirable position you will often end up with dozens if not hundreds of resumes. The task is to try to find the one person you really want to hire, and it's incredibly difficult. You need to cull as many resumes as quickly as possible.
- A decent chunk of the resumes will be immediately eliminated by software parsing. Of course this introduces biases. If somebody doesn't verbosely elaborate upon every single skill they have, they might get cut before their resume is even seen by a human.
- More of the resumes will be culled by inflated requirements. Hiring for an entry level position? Why not require two years experience. It makes no sense, but when 30% of your resumes have it it helps you clear out the list.
Then we finally start to get to the interviewing of candidates. And that again poses more problems. Interviews themselves aren't great methods of hiring. They tend to favor certain personality types which are somewhat undesirable, such as narcissists, and don't necessarily let you get much insight into the candidate's actual capabilities. So we can go the Google route and and have an interview be more of a day long skill interrogation with the interviewee being railed on by team after team with talking ones self up playing a minority role. But that again also tends to bias itself towards certain types of individuals, and is also extremely time and resource intensive. It also means you need to keep your candidate list extremely short which again is kind of begging the question of the problem to begin with.
Genetic profiles (of relevant correlated genes) would provide one of the only truly objective means of filtering that stack down to a more manageable number. I think the privacy concerns are mitigated by regulatory solutions as proposed whereby only the markers that are relevant, which must be specified, are assessed. I really feel like I should oppose this idea and I want to, but really I can't find a compelling argument against it whereas I think the argument in favor of it is quite strong.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Sunday March 12 2017, @07:20PM
When you're hiring for anything like a desirable position you will often end up with dozens if not hundreds of resumes. The task is to try to find the one person you really want to hire, and it's incredibly difficult. You need to cull as many resumes as quickly as possible.
SO you propose a system that will result in the same people getting culled from every position they apply for based on something that was decided for them before they were born, and which they have no control over, and can't change?
This proposal better come with you implementing gauranteed basic income for everyone. Because these people, through no fault of their own, are going to be chronically un/under-employed.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 12 2017, @07:43PM
Genetic profiles (of relevant correlated genes) would provide one of the only truly objective means of filtering that stack down to a more manageable number. I think the privacy concerns are mitigated by regulatory solutions as proposed whereby only the markers that are relevant, which must be specified, are assessed. I really feel like I should oppose this idea and I want to, but really I can't find a compelling argument against it whereas I think the argument in favor of it is quite strong.
Except that's not what this bill is about. It's about allowing employers (who have *already* hired the person) to require access to genetic data for employees to qualify for specific health benefits and reduced health insurance premiums.
You make some interesting points. Sadly, they're all non sequiturs.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @08:33PM
Gattaca was a warning. Not a manual. Same with 1984.