I see you’re just going to come up with whatever new inconsistent ad hoc justification comes to mind for your pre-determined position. Not much point in engaging further when this behavior is engaged.
A surgical abortion costs less than $1000.
A routine hospital birth with no complications costs about $20k.
You tell me where the profit motive is.
Say I’m staring down the barrel of a stretch of utterly miserable suffering before dying; possibly I can instead choose to die now, at Cost A — or, possibly, I get told that, no, it’s not your call, you don’t have a say, what the hell makes you think you have that right, over the course of an agonizing hospital stay where I’ll rack up bills of Cost B.
Where is the profit motive?
You can start here…
Right now it’s with B because they can keep billing for services and collecting from your insurance provider who will keep collecting premiums from you. When your insurer decides that letting you die is more cost-effective than what you pay them is when there’s going to be a problem. And that’s not wild speculation or a slippery slope - that’s something insurance companies already do all the time, and once they have an avenue to legally bring about your death they’ll find a way to use it.
Again, let’s not gloss over how, when I decide that dying is less bad than living, there’s going to be a problem if I’m stopped from avoiding the agony and the suffering like I was just saying, in that the problem is said agony and said suffering.
That said, though: you mention my insurance provider, but you don’t mention my stuff. What happens, in your scenario, when I have no right to say “no, I’d rather die” but the hospital can prolong my suffering as long as I have money in the bank and property that could be sold off?
Which pretty much ignores the “If the law is written so that is pretty much impossible for that to happen…” part of my post.
Seeing as how The Netherlands has had it for over 22 years without the evil consequences you fear, are you o.k. with the way they do it?
That is exactly what it is because it has been shown to work in other countries.
I presume you would refuse care. The hospital can’t force you to receive care without your consent and I don’t think they should be allowed to. What I object to is the hospital actively participating in your death.
Not one with a for-profit medical industry as rapacious and unrestrained by law or ethics as this country’s.
I am not familiar with how the Dutch healthcare system works and cannot judge whether I trust them.
This. At least, if i want to die, i would be grateful for seconal, and i support the same for others.
Yes, you need safeguards, both for the mentally ill and for people who have become inconvenient to others. But I’d prefer to be able to go gentle into that good night.
I was not aware of that.
And to be clear, i don’t think mental illness should prevent a person from being allowed to end their life. There are some mental illnesses that are profoundly unpleasant. But i do think that it’s fairly common for people to have bouts of depression, and to recover and enjoy life again. (And clinical depression gallops through my family, so i have a lot is experience with it, both first and second hand.) Some kind of waiting period when there isn’t an invite physical illness, for instance, might be a good safeguard.
A friend recently took advantage of Canada’s “medical aid in dying” law. She was suffering from terminal cancer. And it was very nice that her family and friends could gather around at a time that was convenient to everyone, and she could say goodbye before she was too impaired to do so. It was a good death. Much better than it would have been in my state, which bans medically assisted suicide.
Thousands of people die from illegal involuntary euthanasia every day. Banning voluntary euthanasia has done nothing at all to reduce those numbers.
@Smapti What if we allow abortions, but only if women have to perform it themselves, no professionally trained specialists allowed? Does that sound fair to you?
I’m definitely on the side of euthanasia for all compos mentis adults; no other conditions / requirements.
I will say though, given the permanence of it, it should never become like the infamous “suicide booth”. For people who don’t have an extremely painful / debilitating / terminal condition, then legal euthanasia should be a slow process with numerous guardrails. For people who do have such conditions the guardrails should still be there or course but the schedule can be a bit quicker to not let people suffer longer than they have to.
Elaborate, please, and preferably with cites.
Looks like some pretty interesting stuff, but it would definitely be a thread hijack to branch off in that direction. I’ll bide my time. LOL
You’ve never heard of people being murdered or killed in war? That’s what involuntary euthanasia is. It’s illegal now, and banning voluntary euthanasia is not a step toward making the involuntary version legal. Bans on involuntary euthanasia that exist now haven’t shown to be a great deterrent to those who are set on euthanizing others.
Dramatic, but I think your interpretation is quite a stretch at best.
Euthanasia - “the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma”.
Really? How do you see murder and involuntary euthanasia differing? Yes, if someone will never again be conscious we’re entering a gray area, but when someone can consciously state their desire to live, or even not state a desire to die, then ending their life is murder, and has no bearing on the matter of voluntary euthanasia.
Your premise is that soldiers are drafted to die, which is not the case. Soldiers are drafted to fight and win, which means surviving. Some do die, but it is not the intention.
It is the intention of the other side to end soldier’s lives.