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California and Canada have similar populations and both allow medically assisted suicide. Canada last year performed this on 20x more people. It’s well documented that many would prefer treatment to death but it isn’t provided as an option due to cost. This is eugenics
Agreed. Medically-assisted suicide cannot be offered to anyone who doesn't have all of the health care they need without bankrupting themselves. Therefore I don't think it's ethical to ever offer it in a country where health care is a financial transaction for the patient.
Otherwise the government might as well be handing the patient a huge bill in the left hand and a gun in the right.
I agree with one exception. It should be allowed only when no treatment is capable of helping. The idea that it can be done in other contexts is not good
Agreed. Which is why drug addicted as a target group is so weird. We have tons and tons of treatments for addiction both chemical and mental. The only "terminal" addict I've heard of are the alcohol addicts who have destroyed their liver. But even they have transplant options.
From a patient perspective, though, it might make more sense in a society where healthcare is limited to allow people to choose to just die. Without it they’re forced to live a life of suffering and pain based on a taboo.
I think there’s a case to be made that medically assisted suicide is always an ethical option to have available to anyone.
If there was actually a shortage of healthcare that couldn't be solved by mere reappropriation of funding, then sure I could see that. But universal healthcare is absolutely doable in the US (can't speak to Canada and any limitations there).
Therefore using death as an option for those who can't afford health care that is priced aggressively is akin to genocide of poor people. And the price of this health care could simply be adjusted and the death option subsidized to the government's whims. Couple that with the persecution (legally that leads to financially) of certain classes or groups of people by a hostile government and you have a recipe for a government to conduct ethnic cleansing while having an "out" in that the poor, sick people are choosing to die.
I didn’t say it was a good ethical argument 😅
Seriously though, I couldn’t agree with you more. My assertion is def built on the premise of healthcare being a scarce resource, which in the US in particular it is not.
Got a source for these numbers?
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-canadians-adopting-assisted-death-22-times-more-than-americans
"In Canada, which has a smaller population than California, physicians or nurse practitioners directly ended the lives of 31,664 people between 2016 and 2021. That compares to just 3,344 in California."
This is an opinion piece article and I'm not sure where they're pulling numbers (I only had time to skim through it)
But if true, let's add a loose and relatively subjective term like "addiction" to the legislation and these numbers will go up.
Maybe this is how the government was planning to tackle the housing problem lol
That's a Postmedia Network owned paper. They've got a conservative bias, best known for that Tory rag the National Post.
I don't think I'd trust unsourced statistics from an opinion piece in a Postmedia Network paper myself.
Here it is from the Gov of Canada. The Canadian side of the stats in that article are correct.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/health-system-services/annual-report-medical-assistance-dying-2021.html#table_3.1
So OP's statement that it was 20x California's is still inaccurate. Either way all this really indicates is ease of access in Canada. The idea that people are being forced into it is ludicrous conspiratorial thinking with absolutely no basis in fact.
OP said "last year" - the Canadian stats I could find were from 2016-2021, which was still 10x the amount of the alleged California stats over a longer duration.
Don't throw caution to the wind just because some people are throwing in conspiracy theories. This kind of thing absolutely needs public scrutiny and to be watched very carefully.
MAID is already under heavy scrutiny. MAID assessors and providers are heavily regulated by independent bodies in each province/territory.
Its up to patients to decide whether they want MAID, and there are strict safeguards in place.
This particular comment chain stems from a dude claiming that MAID is just eugenics. Doesn't that seem a little ridiculous to you?
It's one of those "out there" types of opinions for sure, but I can see where their sentiment is coming from.
Addiction is just such a broad sweeping term, and most often quite subjective. As well as the frame of mind that an addicted or depressed person would be in, makes it difficult to take what the patient wants at face value and to just go with it.
People are fallible, including our doctors, so we need to ensure the system is set up appropriately, with little to no room for varying interpretations.
If there's anything massive corporations have taught me, it's that vague or poorly written laws and regulatory bodies will be exploited if they can be.
I should also point out that the law doesn't specify addictions. It's about mental health conditions which just happens to include addiction. No provincial regulatory body has stated that they intend to allow addicts to recieve MAID.
Keep in mind that this is a Vice article. They are not really a reputable news source, they are sensationalist at best.
I appreciate your awareness of the bias in media groups - sincerely.
I'll have to give the new legislation a read to see how loose it is before forming hard opinions on it, but I just wanted to highlight where a large cause for concern should be for topics like this.
No since this isn't currently a covered condition so these people wouldn't be eligible for this completely voluntary program currently.
Both have state-provided rehab.
How so?