A submission to parliament has made the AMA’s stance on health insurance discrimination clear.
Health insurance companies are on the verge of transformation for patient engagement, according to the AMA submission to the Inquiry into the Treasury Laws Amendment (Genetic Testing Protections in Life Insurance and Other Measures) Bill 2025.
This bill has been welcomed by the AMA, which believes it could increase the capacity of the health sector to identify genetic conditions as part of everyday healthcare.
Patients, it said, have long been locked out of “participating in genetic testing and genomic research for fear of being frozen out of insurance cover if a genetic risk is uncovered.”
Previous amendments to the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 prohibit insurers from using genetic testing information to inform life insurance coverage options, in alignment with the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
“We’re really just reaffirming our pre-existing position, which we formulated in consultation with the Public Health Genomics section at Monash University,” AMA vice president Associate Professor Julian Rait told The Medical Republic.
“Which is really just to make sure that there was an amendment to the insurance contracts act that created a liability offence and penalty to prohibit insurance from using any protected genetic information to make life insurance contract decisions or pricing decisions.
“We hope that this would prevent life insurers from discriminating against people who got the considered length of getting genetic testing.”
The AMA has also insisted that this amendment should be passed with urgency, to assure future patient confidentiality as genetic testing is integrated further into general healthcare.
The removal of insurance penalties and discriminatory terms was also proposed in the AMA submission, to ensure no future insurance discrimination.
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“Obviously this gives people you know greater comfort once the bill passes, and when it does, then people can relax a bit more and just embrace genetic testing more broadly,” Professor Rait told TMR.
“As far as life insurers are concerned, we think this is sufficient protection to ensure that people aren’t discriminated against.
“This bill actually includes other schedules, particularly about legislative provisions in relations to other matters that could be relevant to the functioning of banks and insurance companies.
“It’s a complex act, and the genetic issue is just one part of it.”
