Excerpt from Technological Advances in Genetics Testing: Implications for the Future: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Technology of the Committee on Science, U. S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session, September 17, 1996 In conjunction with that, I am particularly pleased that when we had the markup in the Commerce Committee that we were able to include the words genetic information in the definition of health status, which was adopted by the Committee on Commerce and was included in the final health care reform package. And the staff on the Commerce Committee and I worked on that.
Hr. 2690, that I drafted, will not only safeguard health privacy and help preserve insurance coverage, it will also remove potential barriers to genetic testing itself.
Eliminating the concerns about reprisals by insurance compa nies, will facilitate more effective use of genetic tests as they are developed, and therefore promote cures and treatments. This will sustain the global leadership of the biomedical research industry in the United States.
However, if you can lose your health insurance because your genes show that some day you might require that same insurance, clinical trials will become impossible to conduct and new treat ments and cures may not be developed. Consequently, it is impor tant to have this protection which will ultimately lead to improved health care for all Of us.
As medical science discovers the secrets that our genes carry, the potential misuse of that information, whether through insurance or some other venue, becomes an ever-increasing possibility.
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