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by throwaway313313 551 days ago
In a system of socialized medicine, is the goal of society to spend the money available to save the most people?

Taking into account that people have the greatest medical costs near the end of their life, should the system save others by limiting either the total available spend or the cost of any particular treatment according to some metric?

Should the system repeatedly and frequently remind people that are older and alone in the world without support from friends or family that euthanasia is an option?

How often reminding them would be considered coercive?

Is it coecerive if the system decides if you are over 70 years old that euthanasia is the only option you get offered when your condition is one of a long list of non trivial chronic conditions?

What if we find that in practice (as we almost certainly will if we dare to look honestly) people of certain genders, ages, ethnic groups, economic demographics, are more frequently told that killing themselves is an option they should seriously consider, compared to how often it is recommended to the general population?

Should the suicide prevention hotlines be shutdown and instead become suicide suggestion hotlines?

What about cases like chronic depression?

I'm just asking questions from a hacker perspective when people are busy considering offering euthanasia to everybody (sometimes advocating at every age) is some kind of virtuous undertaking.

People don't consider that throughout society in all walks of life and occupations some portion of people are sociopathic and pyschopathic (possibly with uneven distribution), and some plan administrators, whether that be socialized medicine, or large corporate insurance providers, will interpret their incentives to either their own benefit and/or the benefit of their organization, completely at odds with what you might consider the interests of the individual.

1 comments

Isn't this overcomplicating it? Euthanasia doesn't require advertising, it seems like people yearn for it even in places where it isn't allowed. The point is that it should be a legitimate choice, not a suggestion by society. Just like your doctor doesn't tell you that it's probably time for you to become a parent, no doctor should recommend you to be gone.
Health care professionals consult with their patients to explore their needs and suggest options regularly. This is expected and normal.

The professionals making suggestions naturally have biases. That behavior gets a bit interesting when one of the options is euthanasia.

Here's a few cases:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig...

"Last summer, Global News first reported a case where a veteran claimed to have been pressured by a veterans affairs case worker to consider medically assisted dying."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/canada-offered-assisted-sui...

"Canada offered assisted suicide to a Paralympian veteran who wanted a wheelchair lift installed"

https://care.org.uk/news/2023/07/canadian-army-veterans-diag...

"Canadian army-veterans diagnosed with PTSD offered euthanasia"

These are all the same case. They were all huge headlines in Canada. Note it wasn't a doctor but rather a case worker.

This example showed that the system is working well enough it was caught.