Democrats support socialized medicine systems like those in Canada. Do they also support pressuring people into euthanasia to save money?
More than a dozen years ago, as Democrats began the process that led to Obamacare, Barack Obama noted that “the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out there.” He then called for doctors and ethicists to participate in “a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place” about all of this spending on vulnerable patients at the end of their lives.
Canada shows the end results of the type of “conversation” Obama sought. A recent lengthy Associated Press story demonstrates how Canada has normalized euthanasia and a culture of death, in some cases as a way for the health system to save on expensive medical care.
The country’s single-payer health system has destroyed the ethical boundaries that should require doctors to work their utmost to save patients’ lives, and instead now sees physicians broaching “death with dignity” as a way for the health care system to save a buck.
The AP obtained a recording from one patient with a degenerative brain condition, who recorded hospital personnel talking to him about his care. The recording shows the hospital’s director of ethics telling the patient his care could cost “north of $1,500 per day.” When the patient asked about the plan for his long-term care, the physician-ethicist replied, “My piece of this was to talk to you, [to see] if you had an interest in assisted dying.”
For a supposed “ethicist” to mention the fees needed to care for a vulnerable patient—and then, when the patient said he felt pressured by the discussion, to go further by broaching the topic of euthanasia—violates every principle of ethics, in the medical profession and otherwise. (more...)
Canada’s Euthanasia Culture Previews What’s To Come On America’s Deadly Medicare Trajectory
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