After many long discussions and a bit of research, we came to the conclusion that it’s more likely that people will be choosing private testing even more in the future. Why? For several reasons: There may be longer waits for medical services and some people who are concerned with their sexual health won’t want to wait a few weeks to get testing. And in addition, the amount of information that will be tracked in medical databases will most likely be increasing, and many people are very hesitant about having something like this show up. Even if they get regular testing and the results are always good, there are concerns that this could be seen as “risky” behaviour and thus graded and priced accordingly.

One area that’s of particular concern is DNA screenings that are becoming more and more popular. Getting screened to see what your likelihood for getting certain types of cancers are now being offered in many places and there is an increasing number of people getting them. However, anyone who would show up in a higher cancer risk category doesn’t want this information to be shared with an insurance provider for obvious reasons. I have no information on any companies doing this, but the concern is that if that information gets placed into a central database, people at higher risks for such diseases would be placed in higher risk pools.

So for that reason, we believe that many people will continue to choose private medical testing for any types of conditions that they would rather keep, well, private.