We all need an insurance against what they are going to think they have discovered in our DNA

Sir in “The fallacy of the ‛choice agenda’”, July 18, Sir Samuel Brittan enters briefly into asking what will happen to health insurance when DNA records come to provide detailed health prognosis. I would answer, just what happens when credit records provide detailed information to lenders, that the borrowers often get bunched together into small groups of misfortunate outcasts that have to take care of each other. For instance, among the subprime we find those who are not able to serve a loan at very high interests, and therefore lose out, and those who by being able to serve their loan de-facto evidence they deserved a lower rate, and therefore also lost, making it truly hard to distinguish a winner.

Since Brittan also correctly states that “insurance is well suited to covering events that are unpredictable at the individual level” let me say that for over a decade I have held that the most important new insurance coverage we all need is that of the risks derived from what they are going to think they have discovered in our DNA.