ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to systematize the possible relationships that exist between private and social health-care insurance and the potential unwanted social results when molecular-genetic knowledge with significant prognostic value becomes more readily available. In addition to the problems of health insurance some consideration must be given to the question of life insurance. The issues are rather different, because there is no socialized system of life insurance in existence anywhere in the world. This sector of insurance is totally privatized. The problems arising in health insurance are closely related to the social health-care system in a given society. These systems are always the products of long-term historical developments and are therefore more or less arbitrary. In countries without any social health insurance system a balance between both social and private insurance sectors is unlikely to occur.
