Canada is Euthanizing the Poor, Insurance Companies Would Love to do The Same
One insurance company told a California woman it would cover suicide pills but not chemo soon after the state passed its Euthanasia law.
In March of 2021, the Canadian Parliament passed Bill C-7, which removed language from the country’s euthanasia law restricting so-called. “medical assistance in dying” to the terminally ill. Now, according to the Canadian government, euthanasia is allowed for anyone suffering “unbearable” mental or physical distress in an irreversible state of decline with a serious disease, disability, or illness that cannot be relieved under conditions acceptable to the patient. On March 17, 2023, the mentally ill will also have access to state-sanctioned suicide, following a recommendation by a panel of psychiatrists in May of this year. Disability rights groups in Canada have slammed these moves, and some activists have even likened them to Nazism. Despite claims from government officials that these concerns had “been taken into account,” numerous incidents prove otherwise. Recently, a disabled man whose doctor signed off on his euthanasia application knew the patient was motivated by impending homelessness rather than an actual desire to die, telling a journalist explicitly, “I do not wish to be dead.” Unlike other governments, which simply let the poor and disabled die of neglect, Canada speeds up the process, taking austerity to its logical conclusion by creating a bureaucratic process by which the poor and disabled can surrender to the state and consent to their own execution.
The Trudeau government’s descent into liberal barbarism is troubling, and Americans shouldn’t think the same couldn’t happen here because similar incidents have already occurred. Euthanasia is legal in eleven states plus DC, all of which have much tighter regulations than Canada, including the requirement that patients be terminally ill, with less than six months to live (except for Montana, where euthanasia has been declared legal by court order but no law has been written). However, these guardrails have not always served to protect patients from attempts to coerce them into taking their own lives. Just weeks after California passed its euthanasia bill in 2015, a terminally ill scleroderma patient named Stephanie Packer was denied chemotherapy by her insurance company, who then informed her that her policy covered suicide pills with a co-pay of $1.20. In America, patients will be coerced into killing themselves and be nickeled and dimed for the opportunity. Under a Canadian-style law, America’s considerably more expensive and profit-driven healthcare system would create an epidemic of euthanasia even more extensive than Canada’s, where euthanasia now accounts for 3.3% of all deaths. Insurance companies would jump at the opportunity to save millions in palliative care costs. Perhaps they already have. Blue Shield of California donated $50,000 to the state Democratic Party precisely one week before the End of Life Option Act was introduced.
Americans should be incredibly skeptical of any so-called “right to die” legislation. If Canada has proven anything, it’s that when it comes to euthanasia, the “slippery slope” is not a fallacy; it is an accurate description of what has occurred. The slope here would be much steeper.
frightening