New House Bill Could Let Employees Force Genetic Testing On Workers

The organization was one of the signatories of the letter sent to the committee opposing the bill.

House Republicans are proposing the legislation that would allow companies to carry out genetic testing on employees and their children. If the bill is approved this week, it will become law. “With respect to employees’ genetic information, the change would be particularly dramatic”. Opponents of the proposed bill, known as H.R. 1313are outraged at the infringement of privacy it could represent, while its supporters insist that it’s crucial to endorsing worker wellness. The Committee favored the bill claiming it would allow employers to offer employee wellness plans, help them promote a healthy workforce and would lower health care costs. The programs typically include blood and other biometric testing; questionnaires asking workers what they eat, whether they’re ever depressed, whether they plan to get pregnant; and sometimes smoking-cessation and weight-loss programs.

H.R. 1313 states that employers may provide additional insurance premium discounts to workers who take part in their companies’ voluntary wellness programs.

Committee press secretary Bethany Aronhalt said the the bill is intended only to provide regulatory clarity to employers and reaffirm the rules set up under Obamacare.

“It’s unethical to ask employees this private information”. They can not even request for individuals to take genetic tests, except in limited voluntary cases in which requirements are made and the individual’s cost of insurance will not be affected. Although they have to adhere to good laboratory practices in how they handle DNA samples, there is nearly no quality check on how they interpret the genetic variants they identify.

The latest legislation, though, would allow employers to impose penalties of up to 30% of the total cost of the employee’s health insurance on those who choose to keep such information private. Among those wellness programs, companies could ask employees about their personal habits or require them to undergo screenings for health issues or classes on health habits.

The bill is still under review by other House committees and hasn’t made it to the Senate for consideration yet.

“We’re going to be fighting that tooth and nail”, said Schlager. “That has worked to partly reassure people”.

Should the bill be passed, employers would be allowed to offer higher incentives. “I’m tearing my hair out”.

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If doctors, armed with an individual’s genetic code, eventually believe they can diagnose that a person in his 20s will incur a life-threatening disease in his 50s, who should know that information? The NIH did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Yesterday the bill passed its first “mark-up session”, and will either head for the next markup with the Ways and Means Committee or become part of a package of health-care-related bills that goes to the House floor soon, according to Derek Scholes, PhD, the American Society of Human Genetics’ (ASHG) director of science policy, who attended the session.

Furthermore, employees may also be much less likely to share health information and data in the fear that it may be used by employers to increase their premiums or, if the data showed a potential risk of the employee incurring significant medical costs in the future, lose their job altogether.

Employers say they need the “legal certainty” because ADA and GINA are “not aligned in a consistent manner” with laws about workplace wellness programs, as an employer group testified before Congress last week, stated Stet.