We’re not too far away from rationalizing death for a panoply of challenges of life.
Our good friend in these parts, health-care-policy expert and delight Sally Pipes, CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, writes in Forbes:
Advocates say these laws spare the terminally ill from unnecessary suffering. But a closer look at Europe and Canada—where physician-assisted suicide has been legal and common for years—paints a darker picture. Far from providing peace to terminal patients, these laws are often used by government-run healthcare systems to nudge sick patients toward ending their lives.
In writing about the push for assisted suicide, she quotes from a friend of some of us, who has been mentioned here before. The column opens:
Dovie Eisner was born with a rare genetic condition called nemaline myopathy. He requires a wheelchair and has a host of other health problems. Last year at one point, he stopped breathing, passed out on the street, and was taken to the emergency room.
“I was alive—thanks to the determination of law enforcers and local medical personnel to keep me that way,” Eisner wrote recently in UnHerd. But, he warns, a law being considered in his home state of New York “threatens to undo this presumption in favour of lifesaving” that motivated first responders to keep him alive.
The bill, called the Medical Aid in Dying Act, would allow mentally competent adults with six months or less to live “to obtain a prescription that would put them to sleep and peacefully end their lives.”
Dovie, as I’ve mentioned, has been in a coma since shortly after his piece was published on Unherd and a version was picked up by the New York Post and later the Free Press. Thanks be to God his devoted parents are his advocates, treasuring his precious life. In other circumstances, given the priorities of the medical industry today and a culture that seems so allergic to any kind of suffering (I hate it, too, but it’s part of life) that it would entertain the possibility of assisted suicide for eating disorders ever being appropriate – Dovie would be in exactly the danger he worried about.
Sally writes:
The United States may not have a completely socialized system of medicine yet. But the government covers nearly half of all healthcare expenditures in this country. Over the past 40 years, its share of the nation’s health bill has been growing, slowly but surely. At some point, it may have a financial incentive in hastening people toward their demise.
Looking at what is happening around the world, and especially up north, she warns:
The Canadian government certainly acts on that interest in other ways—most notably by denying access to cutting-edge prescription drugs. Just 45% of new drugs launched worldwide between 2012 and 2021 were available in Canada as of October 2022. Eighty-five percent were available in the United States.
The Canadian government’s calculus could apply on this side of the border. The federal government already pays for Medicare coverage for 68 million people. That number will grow as the population ages.
And Medicare has shown that it will restrict access to some forms of care, through its Coverage with Evidence Development framework. Some 22 devices, services, and therapies are subject to these restrictions, as of 2023.
Medicare defends those restrictions by saying it needs more evidence of clinical benefit. But some of those restrictions have been in place for a decade or more. A skeptic might reasonably wonder whether Medicare is holding back because of unspoken concerns about cost.
There’s no doubt that medical assistance in dying will be effective—if the goal is to save the government money caring for the elderly.
The limited debate in the House of Commons was abysmal on Friday. Far too many members embraced killing the sick and elderly or opted out of taking any responsibility for standing up to the culture of death, which seeks to eliminate the bother of the sick and elderly. And others. We’re not too far away from rationalizing death for a panoply of challenges of life.