[bmelton]

I am sympathetic to those who wish for assisted suicide to prevent pain for diseases or illnesses they've succumbed to. I agree with your thesis that death may be preferential to suffering, and should be available to those who seek it.

On the other hand, there are articles like this[1], wherein the main factor for the requested euthanasia is income.

"But until recently, he was able to live comfortably, sharing his modest home in Medicine Hat, Alberta, with his service dog.

Changes to his state benefits when he turned 65 in May meant his income was cut and he's now left with around $120 per month after paying for medical bills and essentials."

The bogeyman against a state monopoly on medical care has long been that the state will seek cost effectiveness over quality of care, and this adds the additional paranoia of worrying over whether other social safety net programs may lean into the notion that perhaps it isn't as beneficial to fund those who are less productive members of society due to age or inability when it is easier to put them down.

I don't have a particular dog in the fight either way, but where I want medical assisted euthanasia to exist as an option against suffering, I have some concern that it could become encouraged for what I consider less appropriate ailments, like poverty.

[1] - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11516989/Canadian-m...

[mistermann]

My prediction is that this poor man is the leading edge of a massive tsunami that is heading towards Canadian shores. Housing/rent prices are beyond insane in Canada, we have 500k+ immigrants per year, and with food prices now on the rise 10% to 20% at least, I can't imagine how many people there are going to be who can't afford a roof over their heads.

And I've seen zero sign that this is even on the radar of government, though perhaps that's what MAID is for. At least it's an option to homelessness.

[mmastrac]

> I've seen zero sign that this is even on the radar of government

Perhaps you're being hyperbolic, but respectfully, if you really haven't seen any sign it doesn't feel like you've been looking that hard. There have been numerous steps for addressing both housing and food prices, and neither of those can be solved overnight.

[mistermann]

> There have been numerous steps for addressing both housing and food prices

Raising interest rates .000001% would technically qualify as "a step".

So would enacting policies that have technically more than zero effect, but also contain gigantic loopholes (purely accidental oversights, I'm sure) that facilitate avoiding the proclaimed spirit/intent of the policies.

Government is largely theatre, the manipulation of the perception of the public (producing "not to worry!" attitudes among the public if done well). Housing costs have been a MAJOR problem for WAY over a decade (as can be seen in various charts), substantial serious action could have been taken long ago before it was too late, now there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people (recent buyers) in financial positions that could cripple them permanently, in addition to the MANY millions who remain in the position of likely never being able to afford a home (in a traditional sense of the word, or recommended ratios), or will be permanently poor due to having to spend a historically anomalous percentage of their income to just cover rent and food.

[nonethewiser]

When the state pays for your healthcare, your health will never be the top priority.

[grecy]

When a for-profit company pays for your {healthcare, education, prisons} the quality of that service will never be top priority. Profit will. Always.

One only needs to look at how high profits are in those sectors in the USA compared to other OECD countries, and then look at the quality of those services compared to other OECD countries.

Spolier: Americans pay the most, and get the worst.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/us-health...

[8note]

For most of your life, the state is best aligned with keeping you healthy. The state's top priority is making sure you will be working and paying taxes, and you can't do that as well when you are sick.

The state will stop caring once you dont have prospects for paying more taxes, but before then, the state has your health as a higher priority than even you do. Eg. The government doesn't like it when teens do risky behaviour, and tries to stop it, because it will have bad health, and thus tax results.

[larksimian]

I'd add that old people still vote, so the state or more exactly some political parties will still have a massive incentive to keep people alive as long as possible.

Regardless of age, healthcare scandals are a huge political risk so governments will always overspend to avoid them.

The comment you're responding to is like a singularity of wrong.

[Gravityloss]

I was first thinking "private healthcare can fix this gap". But in Canada there's no private healthcare alternative. Here in Finland we have all the alternatives: public healthcare (municipal and government level), employment health care benefit, health insurance and then even private pay cash immediately healthcare. It's got some side effects.

In a bizarre twist, the city of Espoo, which has about the highest GDP per capita in the country, is struggling with their municipal public healthcare absolutely overwhelmed and in crisis. People come to the emergency room for ailments that could have been remedied way earlier in non-urgent regular booked office hours medical center visits. But the budget for those has not been there, you couldn't get an appointment.

Why is this happening? Certainly they would have the money - it looks like they aren't acting rationally. One theory is that since most of the voters in Espoo have good jobs with a great health care benefit, they don't vote for politicians that would put money to public healthcare.

The Canadian system of there being only the public healthcare system would actually "fix" that.

[larksimian]

I think private options just cannibalize and parasitize public health services. I see it where I live in the UK and where I'm from in Romania.

In Romania it's just outright graft: public hospital doctors direct patients for cheap procedures to their private clinics and toss anything expensive back into the public system. The government pays for all treatments anyway, but public hospital budgets end up being harmed since 'profitable' treatments are being siphoned to the public sector(and doctors outright steal stuff from the public hospital).

In the UK it's a similar selection bias in what's treated privately leading to adverse selection effects for the public sector. Combined with consultant-cancer draining tons of money in order to figure out how to save money(hint: the money-saving solution is never firing the consultants). Society is getting older faster and the government is trying to cut costs on one of the cheapest healthcare systems in the OECD. Basically sabotage from the top down.

Similar effect happens with charter schools in the US, almost impossible to prevent adverse selection effects leading to increased problem-student concentration in the public schools.

[idontwantthis]

Is privatization a better alternative then? In the US, private hospitals spent years cutting staff so they were entirely unable to deal with Covid numbers.

[bhawks]

The US Healthcare system is shamelessly intertwined with the state to limit supply and extract rent.

Try to open a hospital and you will run into certificate of need laws who's primary objective flys in the face of supply and demand:

> A primary objective of state CON laws is to control health care costs by avoiding unnecessary expansion or duplicative services within an area.

Or simply try becoming a doctor in America; also known as assuming half a million dollars in debt and 8 years of college education and another 4 years of 'residency' a program where you work yourself to the bone for peanuts. All this courtesy of the professional organizations getting in bed with the state to limit competition and enrich themselves.

Let's not even discuss the pharma industry :).

Any discussion of bettering healthcare in the US that doesn't take on the rot at the core of the system is dead on arrival. Switching to a public solution tomorrow would just further enrich the cronies at the cost of the general public - and health outcomes would be largely unchanged.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/con-certificate-of-need...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/why-does-t...