[tfehring]

In the US, health insurers can only price based on age, location, and tobacco use. Setting health insurance premiums or denying coverage based on any health-related factors has been illegal for over a decade, and changing that would be totally unviable politically.

However, it's a significant risk for other types of insurance including life, disability, and long term care.

[imiric]

Just because it's illegal, doesn't mean health insurance companies don't find loopholes, and consider fines when they get caught as the cost of doing business. See this series of articles[1] for some of their criminal shenanigans.

It's more than likely that they would use genetic data to deny insurance, and then settle the cases in court if they happen to get sued, which statistically is probably a rare occurrence.

[1]: https://www.propublica.org/series/uncovered

[maxerickson]

They are denying claims. If they are going to do that, why would they condition it on genetics (vs just denying anything they think they can)?

The paranoia about insurance and genetics is that they simply refuse to do business with high risk customers.