Many individuals choose not to inform their insurance companies about the testing in order to avoid this issue and choose to pay for testing out of pocket. This is an important issue that can be discussed with the cancer risk assessment team. Individuals seek genetic counseling for a multitude of reasons and it has not been known to adversely affect insurability. Many insurance companies will pay for the cost of counseling and genetic testing. Lately, President Clinton signed an executive order prohibiting genetic discrimination for Federal employees.
Confidentiality is, of course, of paramount importance in cancer risk assessment.
Most risk evaluation programs have careful safeguards to help ensure that family and medical history information as well as genetic testing results are not released to anyone without written consent from the individual concerned.