Prediction: Health insurance company financial failures will increase the culture of death
In recent years, assisted suicide (often euphemistically called āmedical aid in dyingā) is being increasingly normalized across North America.
In 1977, Oregon started the trend with its Oregon Death with Dignity Act, Washington, Vermont, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia. Montana allows it via court ruling (2009), not legislation.
This year, New York State moved one step closer to legalizing assisted suicide. The Medical Aid in Dying Act, passed by the legislature and now awaiting the governorās signature, would allow terminally ill adults with six months or less to live to request a prescription for lethal medication. The governor has until July 12 to veto the bill. If she signs it or ignores it, it becomes law.
One of the most concerning provisions in New Yorkās bill is that deaths under this law would not be recorded as suicides. Instead, the bill REQUIRES the underlying illness will be listed on the death certificate. Ostensibly, this is to prevent families from being denied life insurance claims due to suicide exclusion clauses. Additionally, the claim is that public health statistics would āaccuratelyā reflect underlying illness as the cause of death Could it be that the real reason is to make it impossible to track the rise in assisted suicide?
Worse still, there is no requirement for psychiatric evaluation, even though depression and despair are common among the terminally ill. The law assumes that a person with six months to live is fully capable of making a calm, un-coerced, and informed decision to end their life.
It also assumes that physicians can accurately predict a patientās life span. I have been a physician for 22 years. I can tell you that sometimes I get this prediction right, but I also get it wrong often enough that I prefer to not attempt to predict at all.
Where would this path lead? Look to Canada. What began as a narrowly defined right to die for the terminally ill has ballooned into a broad entitlement to medical death. People with disabilities, chronic conditions, or even mental illness alone are now eligible for euthanasia. There are documented cases of Canadians seeking assisted death (or being offered assisted death) not because they were in unbearable physical pain, but because they couldnāt afford housing or proper care.
Canada legalized āMedical Aid in Dyingā in 2016. Subsequently, provincial health authorities required publicly funded hospices to offer it. However, in typical collectivist overreach fashion, government authorities targeted Delta Hospice Society (DHS) - a faith based hospice in British Columbia.
DHS had affirmed its moral opposition to assisted suicide and refused to comply. However, DHS gets 94% of its funding from public funding. It had been leasing land from Fraiser Health Authority (a government based entity) and had spend millions building facilities on the land.
Fraiser health terminated the lease, seized the facility and now operates a hospice that offers assisted suicide. DHS now offers some euthenasia free hospice services at another location.
As US insurance companies flounder, I predict they will be saved by increasingly aggressive assisted suicide practices. Not only would it help the balance sheets of the insurance companies, but fewer peons in the world will help conserve resources for the elite.
