Nothing saves money on people who are old, disabled and unable to work like just killing them.
Covid killed mostly old people. That saved the government money in the long run, although in the short run it was expensive, except for Sweden where they just euthanized their old people with Covid instead of treating them. (Gave them opiods even when they had enough oxygen and drugs.)
Since Covid, however, there’s been an unfortunate increase in people who can’t work because they’re chronically ill.
This isn’t hard to understand. Britain is massively importing young people who can work, or older people who have lots of money, but at the same time the number of people who are liabilities, financially speaking, is exploding. If you have a liability the easiest way to get rid of it is to… get rid of it.
Canada’s in the same boat, and these bills will spread.
Assisted suicide isn’t automatically a bad thing, mind you. If people were properly supported and cared for I’d support it. People who are in a ton of pain and won’t get better ought to have the option.
But when the government is whining about benefits and cutting them, as in Britain, one doesn’t expect this is being done from a humanitarian impulse. And the medical and social workers, in hospitals and palliative care centers that are overstretched and don’t have enough nurses or doctors or beds, well, convincing someone who’s taking up time or a bed to just die already will have to be pretty tempting, sometimes even with somewhat good motives: to free up resources for people who can be cared for.
But, of course, what will often happen is that chronically ill people or homeless types who could live for quite a long time and with proper care could be fairly happy will wind up dead because in Britain and Canada we don’t help them enough: to get enough housing, food, help and pain meds (given the way we’re so scared of opiates.)
Wikipedia lists some known cases of abuse of the law:
- In 2017, a mother of a young woman with cerebral palsy was told by a doctor that not applying for MAID was “selfish”. Her daughter was in the room when the conversation took place and described the experience as traumatic.[71]
- In 2018, Roger Foley was being treated for cerebellar ataxia at an Ontario hospital. Foley alleged that his only options were to be forcibly discharged from the hospital and then treated by an organization that had previously failed to provide him adequate care or apply for MAID. Foley hired a lawyer for a charter challenge.[72]
- In 2019, Alan Nichols successfully applied for MAID while being hospitalized for suicide ideation. The reason given on his application was hearing loss.[1]
- In September 2021, Rosina Kamis, a 41-year-old Malaysian woman, applied for MAID citing fibromyalgia as the reason. However, in conversations and recordings shared with friends, she mentioned financial hardship and social isolation as additional factors influencing her decision.[73]
- In February 2022, an anonymous Torontonian suffering from extreme chemical sensitivity syndrome with the pseudonym Sophia had a medically assisted death after failing to find affordable housing that was free from tobacco smoke and other chemicals.[74] This case was addressed by her health care provider in testimony provided to the Special Joint Committee on MAID, and was referenced in their final report.[75]
One can safely assume there are many, many more. The fact is that even doctors and social workers think some lives are worth more than others. No one who’s spent time in the medical system believes otherwise.
The West is in decline. Our elites are wedded to austerity as a “solution”. They often, probably usually, feel that people who are non-productive are useless eaters and a burden on the state.
That combination is going to lead to a truly vast expansion of measures intended to get people off benefit rolls.
In a way assisted suicide, or euthanasia, is the most honest of those policies and maybe even the most merciful. There’s nothing honest about deliberate policies which make people homeless, leading to most of their deaths, after all. Politicians know that winding up on the street long term is essentially a death sentence, they know that policies like mass immigration without increasing the housing supply to match will cause homelessness, so they know their policies cause homelessness and death but they can pretend it’s an unintended side effect.
Just killing people is at least not hypocritical.
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Oakchair
except for Sweden where they just euthanized their old people with Covid instead of treating them. (Gave them opiods even when they had enough oxygen and drugs.)
——–
Actively killing people with Benzos, opioids and ventilators was a widespread western practice. A common effect of Benzos and opioids is increased rates of infection and infectious deaths.
Likewise people were inactively killed by withholding antibiotics and other medicines.
In 2020 and early 2021, 83% of the people who died after testing positive for Covid died with pneumonia.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10172968/
In 2020 in New York, London, Northern Italy et al, there were massive spikes in deaths that cannot be from Covid. Unless of course someone wants to argue that mortality rates from Covid skyrocketed for a few weeks in few geographic locations, and then crashed down.
https://hartuk.substack.com/p/ethical-boundaries
Don’t worry though! The media controlled by the ruling class commands you to ignore the evidence.
Be happy! You’ll be saved by the ruling class controlled medical industry as long as you follow orders.
j
Looking at where the homeless situation is heading in the US… Public attitudes towards homeless and the poor in general, but also legal approaches and enforcement practices… I have long had the feeling that the problem is going to end up solved by putting them in a hole in the ground. Adding to this everything you talk about and:
1. have unwanted people become homeless
2. put the homeless to sleep – there will be much rejoicing
3. profit!
StewartM
hey often, probably usually, feel that people who are non-productive are useless eaters and a burden on the state.
Ironic how people who received some 30 TRILLION in free Fed money and who usually don’t produce anything (often, if private equity, they actively destroy production) think that other people who received next to nothing from the state are ‘useless eaters’.
Feral Finster
TL:DR a dead geezer is cheaper than a live one.
Anyway, j more or less knows the score.
Oakchair
First they came for those with principles
I did nothing for they were annoying
Then they came for the immigrants
I rejoiced for they’re a problem
Then they came for the homeless
I agreed for they’re a problem
Then they came for the ill
I nodded for they were expensive
Then they came for me
and no one did anything
for now I was the problem
Mark Level
Thank you, Ian. This shows conclusively where & what “Western values” are. You know the kind that not only encourage deaths for the poor & vulnerable, but that are enacted in endless wars to install those “austerity” governments you mention. And now an open genocide in Gaza, the West Bank, and in the Sunni areas of Lebanon!!
If their is a God, it is “The Market”, has been since Jimmy Carter leaned into Neoliberal doctrine, then Thatcher & Reagan cemented it. If you’re not at least mid-level, the Market says you die, & the Market is God & cannot be contradicted . . . Reading my local free weekly paper today, a local professor’s take on “holiday economics”!!
The news is GOOD!! A holiday retail survey notes that “US shoppers are feeling more optimistic this year (Trump in, Biden-Harris out?) & plan to increase holiday spending by over 8% compared to last year.” Also, “middle-income households” of $100K to $199K are spending moar!! Woohoo! Party like the Apocalypse is near.
Now when I retired 3.5 years ago with a good pension from teaching in California schools just under 28 years, + an additional golden handshake from my district to retire early (younger teachers would make less, they’d run a surplus within 2 years) of about $63K spread over 7 years, I at least knew the wolf would not soon be at my door. My parents also passed away in the interim, Silent Generation folks, who left me & my 2 siblings a quite nice 6 figure legacy . . . But now I realize I’m not keeping up!! I’m not even “middle income” despite having more real wealth than likely 95% of the global population!! I just can’t keep up with that demanding Gawd, the Market.
In any case I’ll still hold my head high & feign that I matter. That way the “death panels” (which the Right hypocritically denounced when Obama the Great Compromiser enacted a Heritage Foundation “Health Care” scheme) won’t catch up with me any time soon.
Late Capitalism is indeed Paradise, Hallelujah!!
capelin
The Right have been saying this for years, and we just thought they were moralistic busybodies.
I had a freind MAID-out this year. Super healthy; injections, turbo cancer, MAID. Gone. Yes I blame the PTB.
There’s some well-documented cases of MAID being pushed. A disabled veteran called to get a stair-lift, being offered maid. Etc. Trial balloons expanding qualifying to homelessness have been sighted.
Anyone know the #’s in Canada? I believe we’re a word leader, and that it went from 10k/yr to 30k last year.
Oji
Don’t forget a rapidly aging prison population. What better way to save moolah than to find ways to increase the death rate? And if we can build a pipeline to prison for the homeless, poverty-stricken, or otherwise outcast and na’er do wells, even better!
Carborundum
The most recent available statistics for MAID in Canada are for the 2022 calendar year. The report for 2023 is imminent, if not overdue, given previous publication norms. If it has jumped to 30K (2022 was 13.2K) that will be a step function change from the previous trend. I’m skeptical it would be that large, but one could quite reasonably expect discontinuous change over the period covered.
Relatedly, beware the random viz being pushed on Twitter. When one consults the source report for the viz tern cites, the very next one gives really quite a lot of reason for doubting their supposedly self-evident conclusions (see Figure 2.5, https://ippr-org.files.svdcdn.com/production/Downloads/Our_greatest_asset_Sept24.pdf). If the deviation is purely attributable to covid, why is the UK so out of step with other major economies, including some with quite comparable demographics?
mago
I forget the movie’s title, the last scene of which features Robert DeNiro in an opium den taking up the pipe.
In my younger years I thought if I ever receive a cancer diagnosis I’m heading to Chinatown.
Now, I hope to die conscious on a rock, whatever that means.
But yes, all those marginal people, the sick, the aged, the homeless and the insane? Break out the needle and go bye bye.
There’s good green money to be made soylently.
sidd
“In a way assisted suicide, or euthanasia, is the most honest of those policies and maybe even the most merciful”
Agreed.
sidd
someofparts
mago – In McCabe and Mrs Miller the closing scene shows Julie Christie in a local Chinese opium den. Still remember that scene after all these years because it was a surprise ending.
mago
Yes, I remember that closing scene and that movie. Leonard Cohen did the sound track. Great movie. Thanks for the memory someofparts.
marku52
There was an X post showing a UK tube station. It was completely plastered with Aid in Dying posters.
Sick. If you ever wondered if the Davos crowd really wanted to kill us all off there is now no doubt
Potomac Fever
McCabe and Mrs Miller was a terrific film. I saw it in the movie theater when I was a teenager – it left an impression.
You might recall the Kurt Vonnegut story – ‘Welcome to the Monkey House’ . Great stuff.
a quick summary pasted from some website
‘The characters of Nancy McLuhan, a suicide hostess responsible for administering lethal injections, and Billy the Poet, a political rebel, contrast to explore the themes of Personal Freedom and Autonomy, The Purpose of Humanity, and The Ethics of Medically Assisted Suicide. ‘