“It may seem a long way to do so by legalizing suicide with the help of a doctor in the United States,” he writes … more
Dovie Eisner was born with a rare genetic condition called nemaline myopathy. It requires a wheelchair and has a number of other health problems. Last year at one point, he stopped breathing, crossed the street and moved to the emergency room.
“I was alive – Thanks for the determination of the law inspectors and local medical staff to keep me in this way,” Eisner He wrote recently to an unknown. But he warns, a law examined in his hometown of New York “threatens to overthrow this presumption in favor of life” that prompted the first correspondents to keep him alive.
The bill, called Medical assistance to the law on deathwould allow mentally capable adults for six months or less to live “to receive a recipe that would make them sleep and end their lives peacefully”.
New York is not alone. Seventeen states-including Florida, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania-are expanding the so-calledDignity death“Laws, eleven states and the Columbia region already have in the books.
Supporters say that these laws store the terminals sick from unnecessary pain. But a closer look at Europe and Canada-where suicide with the help of a doctor was legal and common for years-gives a darker picture. Far from providing peace to terminal patients, these laws are often used by government healthcare systems to push patients by ending their lives.
The United States may not yet have a fully socialized medicine system. But the government covers almost half From all healthcare costs in this country. For the last 40 years, its share of the nation’s health bill has been growing slowly but certainly. At some point, it may have a financial incentive to accelerate people to their collapse.
Around 8.700 The Americans have died of assisted suicide since 1997, when Oregon became the first state to legalize practice. This is about 300 people per year. For comparison, some 3 million Americans die every year.
In other countries, assisted suicide is a much more common cause of death. In the Netherlands – the first country to legalize the process, in 2002–More than 5% Annual deaths are due to medically assisted suicide. In Canada, more than 15,000 people He died of suicide with a physician assisted in 2023-4.7% of total deaths.
Canada only legitimized suicide with the help of a doctor in 2016. Until last year, the assisted suicide rate north of the border increased about 31% annually.
The majority of Canadians who choose “medical assistance to death” are between 65 and 80. But the number of Canadians aged 18 to 45 years of age choosing to end their lives by the maid was increasing each year. There were only 34 in 2017 – but 139 in 2021.
These numbers are likely to develop as Canada continues to extend the tanks of people who are eligible for suicide with a doctor assisted. Government has already expanded the law to include those who are they are not in the end But they live in circumstances they consider themselves “unacceptable”.
Now, the UK is considering similar legislation. Last week, the House of Greenlit Communities, a bill that would allow for the final ill adults in England and Wales to take their lives with the help of a doctor. The legislation is proceeding with the House of Lords.
Supporters of these policies can characterize them as compassionate. But it is impossible to ignore the financial interest of the Canadian government to have a less person who needs the health care funded by the government.
The Canadian government is certainly acting in this interest in other ways-mainly by refusing access to prescription state-of-the-art medicines. Only 45% of new drugs that started worldwide between 2012 and 2021 were available in Canada since October 2022. Eighty -five percent were available in the United States.
The accounting of the Canadian government could be applied to this side of the border. The federal government is already paying for Medicare coverage for 68 million people. This number will increase as the population ages.
And Medicare has shown that it will limit access to certain forms of care, through Coverage with evidence of evidence skeleton. About 22 devices, services and treatments are subject to these restrictions by 2023.
Medicare defends these restrictions by saying that more indications of clinical benefit is needed. But some of these restrictions have been put in a position for a decade or more. A skeptic could reasonably wonder if Medicare is held up because of non -existent costs about the cost.
There is no doubt that medical assistance to death will be effective – if the goal is to save government money that takes care of the elderly.
It may seem far away from legalizing suicide with the help of a doctor in the United States. But it was not long ago that this seemed unthinkable in Canada as well. Hopefully, legislators will change the lessons before it’s too late.
