# Ban life and disability insurers from using genetic results

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-prev-genetic-non-discrimination-insurance/  
OnCo record `idea-prev-genetic-non-discrimination-insurance` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Fear of losing insurance is a top barrier to genetic testing in surveys. Extending non-discrimination law to life and disability cover, as Canada's 2017 Genetic Non-Discrimination Act does and the US law does not, would remove that fear and raise cascade testing in families.

## Summary

Fear of losing insurance deters people from genetic testing, so this idea extends non-discrimination law to life and disability cover in countries that lack it, as Canada's Genetic Non-Discrimination Act of 2017 does, whereas the US Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act excludes those products. Surveys consistently cite insurance fear as a top barrier to testing, so the aim is higher cascade and population testing uptake. The test is a difference-in-differences comparison across jurisdictions before and after legal change. Speculative in maturity, it addresses the bottlenecks Inherited risk is mostly unidentified and Prevention we already have is not deployed, and links to germline testing.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Legal protection increases cascade and population testing uptake by at least 10 percentage points.
- Rationale: Surveys consistently cite insurance fear as a top barrier to testing.
- Proposed test: Difference-in-differences comparison across jurisdictions before and after legal change.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: policy

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Inherited risk is mostly unidentified): Childers et al., National estimates of genetic testing in women with breast or ovarian cancer (JCO 2017): https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.2017.73.6314

## Connected records

- fronts: [Prevention & Risk](https://onco.cc/fronts/prevention/)
- technologies: [Germline (hereditary) testing](https://onco.cc/technologies/germline-testing/), [Insurance, mortgages and the right to be forgotten](https://onco.cc/technologies/rejuv-life-insurance-loans-and-the-right-to-be-forgotten/)
- bottlenecks: [Inherited risk is mostly unidentified](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-hereditary-risk/), [Prevention we already have is not deployed](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-prevention-adoption/)
- key papers: [National Estimates of Genetic Testing in Women With a History of Breast or Ovarian Cancer](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-childers-j-clin-oncol/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/idea-prev-genetic-non-discrimination-insurance.json