Five weeks ago, over on the Substack, I explored how some experts in the UK were uncomfortable about the details of an assisted suicide bill in the House of Commons. Unlike a lot of experts over here, who may see this as a ticket to more revenue, the Royal College of Psychiatrists thought there needed to be more emphasis on caring for the needs of people who could consider assisted suicide. Tat before anyone could be allowed to proceed, an evaluation of questions of care must first be performed to ensure the system hadn’t created the conditions leading up to a desire for medically assisted death. Without these considerations, it would not be able to support the bill as written.
It is an opinion that aligns nicely with many of my concerns.
When people are miserable, particularly with a taxpayer-funded health care system, their treatment will always cost a good deal more than getting them to volunteer to die. It is a morbid incentive, but we’ve seen it in Canada, a nation that is responsible for much of the misery that creates the conditions it then suggests are grounds for medically assisted dying. And while we don’t have many examples similar to that in the US (80% of Oregon’s assisted suicides just happen to be on government health insurance), it is the slippery slope that leads me to oppose it, especially here in New Hampshire.
If you don’t force the state to value life more than death, it will inevitably choose the latter, especially when incentivized by a right to assisted suicide it created and oversees, which, when exercised, will always be easier and less expensive than the care.
We’re five weeks along, and the House of Commons has just passed a sloppy assisted suicide bill that addresses none of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ concerns.
Under the provisions of the bill, terminally ill adults will be permitted to apply to be killed, the application being considered by a panel of two doctors, a social worker, a lawyer, and a psychiatrist.
Proponents of the law have rejected concerns that elderly and unwell people could be pressured into being killed to relieve pressure on the National Health Service or their families, insisting there are strong safeguards and that the notion of a “slippery slope” of change is false.
…
Royal College of Psychiatrists said, however, that the concerns they’d voiced about the law remain unsolved. They said in a statement this afternoon: “Many of our key concerns remain unresolved. We are particularly concerned that the Bill does not currently require a holistic assessment of unmet need. Does a person have a mental disorder that is contributing to their wish to die? Do they feel like a burden? Are they lonely? Do they have access to the care they need?”.
Interestingly, the UK version is allegedly modeled after the law in Oregon, which opponents point out has wandered into the very territory they claim will result in abuses by advocates and the government.
“The current Bill fails to protect vulnerable and disabled people from coercion. This is not hyperbolae but based on what happens in the US state of Oregon, the model for this law. There, a majority of those who have ended their lives in recent years cite fear of being a burden on their families, careers or finances as a reason. While that law has been expanded and extended several times. Worryingly ‘terminal’ now includes eating disorders such as anorexia and even insulin dependent diabetes.
Helping people add value to their remaining years takes a backseat to hurrying them toward the “undiscovered country.” The very thing we have long reported is inevitable, especially in universal care systems like those they have in the UK, and that, in Canada, has demonstrated how right opponents of assisted suicide are.
The real problem is clearly not that the state will create reasons to expedite the deaths of its citizens; it will. It is that the organizations that predict these abuses … need new compliant pro-death leadership. In China, interestingly enough, they resolve this problem by killing the non-compliant, a form of career-assisted suicide that skips a lot of the moralising and concern, with the added benefit of harvesting their organs if viable, and then replacing the former leaders with more suitable ones. It is a risk inherent to any government-managed assisted suicide program. It is the one good argument against the death penalty, whose opponents are often assisted suicide advocates.
Every step on this matter is slippery, except the one where the government does little more than investigate suicides to ensure they are not murders and to mediate disputes between insurers and families (in the courts in the event of lawsuits) over the deceased’s policy coverage; a matter insurers will try to police on their own – especially since assisted suicide coverage is reportedly an option under many modern health and life policies after more than five years of premiums (rates and rules vary).
If you’re going to allow this, I’m not sure the government has any business outside these corridors.
The narcissistic psychopaths who favor depopulation and social engineering (assisted suicides most common and persistent advocates) are also the same sort attracted to leadership positions in government. They claim their support for assisted suicide to make them appear as if they care about the pain and suffering of others.
They don’t.
