The House Health Plan Makes Your Genes a Preexisting Condition

Of all the provisions of the Affordable Care Act—“Obamacare,” if you’re on a first-name basis—the one that seemed the most uncontroversially humane was the guarantee that insurance companies could not use so-called preexisting conditions to deny coverage. If you had a chronic illness or had recovered from something and lost your insurance, or if you quit or got fired, you could still get onto a plan.

But the odds say that sick people stay sick or get sicker, and insurance companies don’t make a profit by paying out. By voting to repeal the ACA and replace it with … well, with something, not totally clear what, the Republican-led House of Representatives seems to have nuked the preexisting condition guarantee. The new bill, which passed in a close 217-213 vote, allows insurance companies to charge sick people more. According to one nonpartisan analysis, it allocates enough money to cover those higher rates for just 5 percent of people with preexisting conditions.

Think it can’t get worse? Hold, as the saying goes, my beer. The ACA specifically protected against discrimination...