The answer is essentially yes … in the short term.
If you’re an apparently healthy person who wants to learn about your genetic disease risks, you can send a saliva sample and a hundred bucks or so to an array-based direct-to-consumer genetic testing company and get some trait information and selected health risks, plus details about your genetic ancestry. But as the direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies themselves will tell you, this is only a fraction of the medical value that may be hidden in your genome. Many of the experts in both ancestry and medical genomics will suggest that since consumer facing genomics are not as comprehensive as those meeting medical standards, it is quite OK for consumers to pay for these products out of their own pockets.
But when it comes to health care, people expect products and services that are medically beneficial to be available to more than just those people who can pay for them. As medical science increasingly demonstrates the life altering value of genomics, the notion that these services must be paid for out of pocket, making it inaccessible to some, does not seem appropriate or fair.
