Here’s a link to an excellent piece by Wesley Smith, about how the combination of cost cutting in government funded insurance plans and legal assisted suicide will drive the sick, primarily the elderly, to suicide. This can happen with private insurance plans too, but we know it has already happened with Oregon’s version of Medicaid, in the Randy Stroup and Barbara Wagner cases. Smith says that this is coming to VT, among other places. Boy is he right about VT, where, barring the sudden appearance of a large group of legislators willing to stand up and say no, we will soon be adding single payer health insurance to assisted suicide.
Smith says governments will be driving the dying to assisted suicide. Of course they will be dying because they won’t be able to get life-extending treatment paid for. Jeanette Hall, the Oregon cancer patient whose doctor talked her out of using the state’s assisted suicide law and into accepting treatment, is still alive 13 years later. Thanks goodness she did not get one of those letters from Oregon Medicaid.