While Republicans have been loudly debating a replacement for Obamacare, an innocuous-sounding bill, the Preserving Employees Wellness Programs Act (HR 1313), quietly passed the House Committee on Education and the Workforce this week. It requires all employees to submit to genetic testing as part of workplace “wellness” programs.
Insurance companies and employers can determine you have a genetic predisposition to develop an actual medical condition and either exclude you from coverage or throw you into a very high-risk pool and charge you 30 percent to 50 percent more for health insurance.
There will be a caste system in America: those with good genes and affordable health care, and those with bad genes and no health care because they cannot afford it. Further, employers could refuse to hire someone who failed a genetic test, as they can do now with required drug testing.
Aside from the gross unfairness embodied in this approach to health care, the implications of this bill are especially frightening in this country’s current climate of racial and ethnic hatred.
What better way to build a data bank for ethnic cleansing than requiring every worker in America to submit to genetic testing? Contact your Republican representatives in Congress and urge them to vote “no” on HR 1313.
