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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Since Canada legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016, as of Oct. 31, 2018, more than 6,700 Canadians have chosen medications to end their life.
Canadians who meet eligibility requirements can opt to self-administer or have a clinician administer these medications; the vast majority of people choosing MAiD have had their medications delivered by physicians or nurse practitioners. Canada is the first country to permit nurse practitioners to assess for medically assisted dying eligibility and to provide it.
The precise meaning and implications of MAiD—in particular, who can request medical assistance in dying in Canada—is still evolving through court rulings. Québec's Supreme Court recently struck down the reasonably foreseeable death requirement under the Criminal Code and the end-of-life requirement under Québec's Act Respecting End-of-Life Care.
Without the requirement of a reasonably foreseeable death, it is likely that other legal challenges will occur to extend assisted dying to other groups such as those whose sole underlying condition is severe mental illness.
Our research has explored how the nursing profession is regulating the new area of responsibility towards medically assisted dying and how nursing ethics might guide policy and practical implications of nurses' experiences.
Current legislation guards the right of health-care providers to conscientiously object to participation in MAiD. Nurses who do conscientiously object have a professional obligation to inform their employers of that objection, to report requests for MAiD, and to not abandon their clients. They also must ensure that their choices are based on "informed, reflective choice and are not based on prejudice, fear or convenience."
The nurses who surround the process of medically assisted dying are an important source of insight into the complex and nuanced conversations our society needs to have about what it is like to choose, or be involved with, this new option at the end of life, and to be involved in supporting patients and their families toward death with compassion.
Our most recent research involved interviews with 59 nurse practitioners or registered nurses across Canada who accompanied patients and families along the journey of medically assisted dying or who had chosen to conscientiously object. Nurses worked across the spectrum of care in acute, residential and home-care settings.
[...] With the changing landscape of medically assisted dying in Canada, the need for reflective conversations becomes ever more urgent. We need to better understand how medically assisted dying changes the nature of death to which we have become accustomed and how those changes impact all those involved.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday September 28 2019, @06:47PM (40 children)
I have no doubts about health insurance industry is well motivated to promote assisted dying by all means. Effects for specific valued cases are directly reducible to money. Well, I say: it is a crime against humanity. Implementing this is just another Overton window shifting, sliding the whole culture normatives into barbarism. Expect in future, you or your progeny may be forced into assisted dying by legal procedures, initiated by insurance companies or state. We can already see what private prison industry does to the people in, say, United States.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday September 28 2019, @06:59PM (13 children)
Simple: Don't get insurance. You will then be forced to participate in the unassisted dying process. Don't ever go to the Doctor or any medical professional. Much more reasonable, eh?
No, by and large the majority of medical and nursing practice in the United States is largely against the concept of medically assisted end of life.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday September 28 2019, @07:12PM (1 child)
In my homeland, health insurance is obligatory. It always was, I burn the money for my whole life on it. However, I really never go to medical professionals. I simply do not trust them, that's is no different to trusting some random professional software from wilderness of internets.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @08:20PM
Actually, there is a world of difference between those two. The medical profession is licensed, and nobody can call themselves a professional without the proper training. On top of that, providing the wrong care risks their license being revoked. Contrast this with "professional" software engineers, who are anything but.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Saturday September 28 2019, @07:29PM
No, by and large the majority of medical and nursing practice in the United States is largely against the concept of medically assisted end of life.
A dead person pays no bills. In the US long term treatment is the most profitable goal.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday September 28 2019, @08:34PM (2 children)
I've known people with cancer. If you don't see the doc, nor get prescriptions, it hurts like hell to die. Not to mention it can take months, if not years.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:43PM (1 child)
A bullet only costs a few cents. Then it will take seconds.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 29 2019, @02:05AM
Well, you're going to have to get the gun, too. An entry level Mossberg or Remington will run 500. And you're gonna want a 12 gauge shotgun because you want to get it right on the first try. Ive seen what happens when people use a pistol and dont get it right on the first try. You want to be remembered bu those around you as at least being pretty before your death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @08:55PM
that's irrelevant. when all the old religious geezers die off that will change quickly.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 28 2019, @09:20PM (5 children)
Which I attribute to their insatiable desire to "help people" (better described as: GET PAID!)
Having the option of legal medically assisted end of life is scary in the way that being an organ donor is scary because of the influence it might have on trauma care staff to send you for harvesting while you are fresh, rather than make every reasonable attempt to save your life.
Not only is it scary that medical staff might mis-represent your current feelings with respect to ending your own life, but your own state of mind can change - dramatically - over time, and the decision to end your life extinguishes all options to change your mind later. However, if one has taken the time and effort to file a proper DNR, in my view that is sufficient indication that you do not want extraordinary life-saving measures to be taken, that you wouldn't mind your organs being harvested, and they you have truly decided that you "are ready" to be gone from the world of the living.
While medically assisted end of life is often painted as "barbaric," I simply can't see it that way. What has been universally barbaric, in my view, is keeping people who are very near end of life alive beyond their wishes, suffering against their will and against the will of their families and caregivers. The only beneficiaries I have seen in those situations are the recipients of the, often significantly, increased billable services rendered.
On the other hand, I have also seen hospice staff administering a cocktail of pain meds to elders who - frail and infirm, bedridden and unable to communicate clearly - still clearly resisted the pills; but after months of continuous deterioration in their condition it would seem the merciful thing to do for all concerned. There is a difference between "DNR" and "dope me up until I stop breathing," perhaps that should also be clearly spelled out, and respected on the DNR form.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:20PM (4 children)
Or it could just be that most people enter the healthcare profession with some intention to help prolong life, and financial issues may eventually color that view or they may not (at least if you feel that those taking care of you actually do deserve to get paid). Either way, my experience of most caregivers is that they are not well oriented to see a person's desire to end their life as rational. Not all, just most, and even those who are not objectionable to it in theory may change their minds (and vice versa) once confronted with a real person making such a request.
One significant change that enables such care (and yes, I do feel it is care) is the shift over the last few decades into recognizing the primary of patient autonomy as a guiding ethical virtue. A patient has to be capable of wielding that autonomy, but it is a change from the past of, "Doctor knows best and the orders Doctor gives will be carried out regardless of patient wishes." Which doesn't mean that caregivers (including physicians and midlevel providers) are perfect at that. Just moreso than in the past, especially when such a notion was not even truly considered. And there are still arguments today about it.
But this is why the states and countries that do have such processes often (always?) have safeguards in the system like requiring psychological consults separated by months in time to ensure that the desire comes from a place of ending suffering (as opposed to depression or other treatable psychological conditions). The notion that an insurance company could just issue a death warrant on someone is flatly ludicrous and reveals the ignorance of the OP as to what the actual process is today in the few places where it is legal to provide such assistance. Sure, things will change to something different- it always does. But GP doesn't begin to understand what things would actually have to change to make what GP espouses a reality.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 29 2019, @02:12AM (3 children)
Meaningless anecdote, N of 1, follows:
I had a debate with a newly minted M.D. who was doing his residency, making boatloads of money moonlighting here and there, driving his fancy new car on dates with only the best bimbos Miami Beach had to offer, and this young gem of a human being took the stance: "who cares if mammograms cause breast cancer, which they categorically don't (far from proven at that time), but even if they did, they absolutely increase the odds of detection which means we can treat it, cure it, and save lives - if we're causing some amount of breast cancer in the process, that's completely irrelevant because the treatment is so effective." Neglecting those who get mammograms up until they actually get cancer from them, then stop and die from the cancer induced by the detection - that's their fault for not continuing medical supervision like they're supposed to, neglecting issues of quality of life involved in the time spent screening and surgery that would otherwise be un-necessary, neglecting the risk of death under anesthesia, neglecting the risk of exposure to MRSA and other lovelies encountered while in the hospital environment... for him it was clearly about practicing medicine (getting paid) as often as possible.
Lots of people do, indeed, go into medicine to help people - they tend to have a much higher and faster career burnout rate than the one that go into it for the MONEY!
Absolutely, paid, paid well. Go-getter, specialist entrepreneur business owner M.D.s should be top 1% earners. Unfortunately, they are incentivized to treat, treat, treat, to get paid, paid, paid, rather than simply helping people who need it and leaving those who are better off without medical intervention the hell alone. Many of them do follow that model of prescribing for maximum personal income, within the guidelines established by their none too medically conservative peers. In my personal experience, while trying to avoid the money spinners and stick with the good hearted souls, I'm currently running about 80% money spinner in my M.D. interactions.
The AMA should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for the psychological selection and grooming process they have established to perpetuate the M.D. as God complexes that abound throughout our hospitals.
Don't they, though - implicitly? Delay and denial of necessary treatment happens, and it's mostly down to reimbursement, not availability of resources. Not in medically induced death, but in treatment of serious diseases.
Back in the early 90s, my grandfather had a near-death experience at age 72 - after 2 weeks in the hospital, they changed his meds, put him on bloodthinners which restored circulation to his brain and gave him mental clarity like he had when he was 60, and sent him home. Over the next year he thought a lot about what was probably coming - a relapse of the condition leading to amputation of a leg, or death - and he firmly made up his mind that he would not let them cut off his leg, he didn't want to live that way, he didn't want to burden the world that way, and he had spent a decade taking care of a bedridden parent from age 55-65, so... he knew firsthand what it was like... The attending M.D. was in disbelief, couldn't possibly approve it, but let my grandfather have his way against medical advice. As everyone knew would happen, gangrene set in and there was a painful week and a half while that ran its course. A week of that week and a half was un-necessary suffering for all involved, but legally required. My grandfather had made his peace months earlier, and the family had all come and said their goodbyes in the first 3 days after he went in the hospital, the last 7 days he was doped up and the rest of us were just on vigil. We got him in the ground 36 hours before Hurricane Andrew struck, what an unholy mess that would have been if he didn't die for another week.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Sunday September 29 2019, @09:55AM (2 children)
So how was the guy making money personally off of doing mammograms? In case you weren't aware, residents aren't independently paid based on their billings. Yes, this is a little disingenuous because residents are liable to their supervisors who are very much paid based on their billings... But the meat of your anecdote is the resident arguing that more people are cured of breast cancer because of mammography than the overall risks posed by the procedure to screen and diagnose. That reflects more upon the ideal of recognizing that "do no harm" means something more ethically involved than, "do nothing invasive." If it did not medicine as you know it would not exist, because many of the things done in treatment actually do cause harm - but are done with beneficence because overall greater therapeutic returns are expected when screening X or procedure Y are done about condition Z - for the overall population. It's also why medical practice changes - when mammograms are done has changed significantly since you had that conversation in the 90s. But I've digressed seriously.
That doesn't quite match my experience for outpatient interactions. Starting from the principle that physicians don't simply go out and dig up patients, "Hi! you look like you could use a diagnosis and treatment today!" A person must first seek out care or have an event that causes an ambulance ride. It also doesn't match either outpatient or inpatient models of billing, at least for the basic management of a patient's condition. If you are not actually having a procedure done (actually the vast majority of patient treatments involve no procedures) and there isn't any kind of "quality incentives" at work, then your billing is based upon the complexity of the physician visit. And if you're inpatient the primary source of your charges centers around the diagnoses that are established. It's when the physician starts doing things after the evaluation that starts racking up costs.
OK. Then when do we put people on trial for allowing themselves to see the MD as God? That is very much a two-way street rooted in a person's fear of pain and death.
No, they don't. Not in the Republican talking point of "death panels" - which was a very convenient fiction. On this level reimbursement and resource availability are pretty close to equal, based on simple supply and demand. The more availability, the lower the price. The more efficacy at a lower cost, the more readily approved the procedure. Yes, they make decisions like, "A treatment which only works to improve the patient in 5% of cases over a 5 year span is not worth the expense paid on behalf of the 95% for the remainder." Or decisions like, "We can pay for product A which costs half again as much as product B, yet product A has not been shown to produce any more clinical benefit than product A." - and you can substitute "procedure" for "product" there. That's different from making arbitrary decisions about who lives and dies. I'm not defending that process as something good, as I believe there are better alternatives to structure medical care - I'm very much a supporter of government-supplied single payer. But the rationing process is not done solely with the intent to make money. And there must be a rationing process unless the floodgates of supply can be opened, which would very much take government action.
That sounds like it was an incredibly stressful experience, and I'm sorry for the suffering y'all went through. Thank you for sharing that story. Was hospice care involved at all? I would have thought that at some point (especially when gangrene set in and he refused treatment) that it could become a matter for that type of care. (Not to mention, today, one could discharge from hospital once further restorative options were off the table). Deaths attended by hospice can also be trying and painful, just ones where the suffering is minimized to the lowest extent possible. Medically assisted death does not work very quickly, for the simple fact that one doesn't want a rush to judgment.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 29 2019, @02:19PM
No, they don't, but you could clearly argue that drug companies (and others) endlessly exhort persons "suffering" all manner of common life complaints to "ask your doctor about..." And, once in the office, that's where I've met 4/5 doctors who appear, based on their recommendations to me, to be seeking payment over patient well-being. An extreme case in point: I had an unexplained and bothersome lump, went to an ENT and asked him about it, he was perplexed, but suggested we take a biopsy. While tugging on it for biopsy, 90+% of it came out: win-win. Sent it to the lab: Schwannoma, benign. Great, now we know - he's in the 1/5 category: did what I asked, reasonable progression of procedures, recommended followup in 1 year. During the following year I moved 1000 miles away, did my followup with an ENT in the new town, sat in the waiting room for 30+ minutes while reception checked, then rechecked my insurance (from a big company located 2 miles from his office, but, I suppose they just like to be sure), heard the confirmation of payment come through the receptionist's phone, and moments later I'm called back. "Oooh, yes, schwannoma, very scary, can lead to a string of pearls condition, you want to get the rest of that out of there, I have an opening in my surgery schedule next Tuesday, let me take care of that for you, I'll cut the whole thing out so it won't come back..." So, at the time, a Google search (not even flipping PubMed, straight up Google), leads to a top result of a documented case of one Japanese fisherman who had a string of pearls schwannoma present between his ribs after an injury... extensive deep searches through the medical sources and Google never find another single mention of schwannoma string of pearls. Dude has an opening in his surgery schedule and he's going to fill it with me because I have presented at his office with A) insurance that will pay, and B) something he thinks he can scare me into letting him cut on my tongue for no good reason. Followup with another ENT 2 years later: nothing to worry about, come back if it starts growing quickly or gets big enough to be a bother, no followup recommended. Oh, and by the way, just cutting a big margin around a schwannoma doesn't guarantee non-recurrence, often the act of cutting will trigger a restart of growth. She was another of the 1/5.
Osteopath, surgically took care of a nasty crush injury for me, but, inexplicably, left a bone chip in. Saw it on the followup X-ray, asked: "what's going to happen with that" - the normally confident and outspoken MD sort of mumbled an evasive response. After spending 6 weeks of followup therapy in the clinic he coincidentally owns, that bone chip presented at the surface in a pustule of green ooze: osteomyelitis - with a recommendation of followup surgery to "take care of it". The particular procedure he performed normally has a 2 week recovery time, and a post surgical infection rate far below 10% - procedure was well documented back in the 1970s as an "office based" thing, but, practices have apparently changed over the years and now we need a full blown surgery, in the physician owned surgical suite, with general anaesthesia, etc. and, somehow, infection rates from that setup are far worse than the office based practice of the 1970s, but, hey, today we have physician owned MRIs to look at the infection with, and elastomeric ball based IVs so the osteomyelitis patients can still go to work during their 6 weeks of treatment... he was clearly in the 4/5, far too many of his patients were referred for post-surgical osteomyelitis treatment, and his methods are ballooning his reimbursements while doing nothing of value for the patients - at least from the perspective of the patients I met while under his care.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 29 2019, @03:05PM
I don't see it that way, at all, and most nurses and other sub-M.D. medical staff I have interacted with concur: they are only Gods in their own minds, otherwise they're pretty much PHBs blind to their own shortcomings - but with the one power: to utterly destroy your career, so you might as well play along with their delusions if you want to be able to pay your rent.
I have noticed a severe reduction in the seeking of second opinions over the decades, and I believe the insurance based reimbursement structure has heavily contributed to that. IMO, as insured patients, any time a procedure with potential for negative effects and outcomes is recommended, it should be our covered by insurance right to seek a second, and possibly third opinion when the situation calls for it. But, with 6+ week delays involved in seeing specialists and astronomical (5x, 20x, 200x) costs of "not covered" anything in the medical profession... we seem to be being steered into accepting whatever the first doc tells us. Attribute some of the time delay to the AMA again, and their inadequate residency capacity leading to undersupply of little gods-in-their-own-minds, but the insurance oriented billing farce where private pay can literally be more than 100x as expensive as "allowed" charges under insurance, that is just a disconnect from all reason. By the way, I don't hate all doctors, I worked for a very good man (who the staff literally nicknamed God) for 12 years - chief of medicine at a major hospital, top of his field, etc. I've known many good pediatricians and primary care docs. But, so many quacks, so many ego cases, and to stretch the field a bit, so so many greed based dental practices.
Fun recent case in point for insanity rooted in the insurance reimbursement model: a drug company has discovered that compounding of dextromethorphan and quinadine has beneficial effects for brain chemistry of a fairly wide spectrum of patients, but so far they have only sought approval under the Dx of PBA. They did three PBA studies (a very easy to study condition), maybe a couple of hundred patients enrolled, and now they're approved to market the drug. Know what old cough syrup + more or less tonic water goes for in a pill these days? $1200 per month. That system is broken, and, luckily in this case, I believe easily circumvented with a compounding pharmacy - though we haven't verified that yet, still evaluating the drug's effects so far it seems good.
Yes, basically as soon as the M.D. accepted my grandfather's wishes he was transferred to an in-hospital hospice wing. The condition that got him was an aneurysm in his femoral artery, all other arteries to that leg had already shut down and when this one clotted and didn't respond to treatment, that was it, no circulation to the leg. The condition was present a year earlier and they were able to treat it with clotbusters, eventually, but not the next time. The hospice care was good, the only complaint we had was that the final week was just pointless - the decisions all made, everybody at peace with what was coming, just having to live through it for a week with him in such a bad state and no real chance of recovery other than him changing his mind to take off the leg, anyone who knew him knew he was far too stubborn to change that decision, and he was in such an altered state from the pain meds that he really couldn't make any decisions anyway. If he weren't so stubborn it would have been even more agonizing if he flip-flopped while on the meds and started asking to be saved, only to change his mind back after he was lucid again, and utterly tragic if they did take his leg off and save his life just for him to commit suicide on his own later.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Saturday September 28 2019, @07:01PM (7 children)
Yeah. If you just wanna die, jump out of window. No need for legal procedures for that. You cannot be punished posthumously.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @07:06PM (1 child)
Doesn't work if you live in the basement.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:47PM
That's Slashdotters, not here. Also, their moms would tell them to get back inside if they tried to jump.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Sunday September 29 2019, @09:56AM (3 children)
While not entirely serious, yes you can.
You jump out your window and it is a suicide. No life insurance for you.
You participate in a medically assisted end of life your life insurance cannot be withheld (at least everyplace I know that has a legal shield for it from the law it is explicitly defined as not being suicide).
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:40AM (2 children)
Why would you care about insurance while being dead?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:08AM (1 child)
And people choose to have families and shit like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:44PM
That requires like meeting people you know personally right??
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday September 30 2019, @03:39AM
These people are usually incapable of jumping out of a window or otherwise ending their life
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @08:07PM (8 children)
Why? As a sibling says: dead men pay no bills. A permanently-ill patient is much more profitable than a dead one.
To which I say: it is a crime against humanity to keep someone alive against their will.
That future is already here, and it's called the death penalty.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Trilkhai on Saturday September 28 2019, @10:24PM (3 children)
That's only the case if the permanently-ill patient isn't also costing more in medical bills than the insurance company is being paid.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:45PM (2 children)
At end of life, usually it's government money, rather than private insurance, paying the bills. Don't let it go to waste!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:11AM
Yes it's the perfect system. Insure them while they are minimum risk (able to work full-time) and dump them off the treadmill when they start to wear out. Can't believe this is actually a system. It's the ultimate in privatized gain and socialized losses.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 29 2019, @02:10AM
Illegals' ER bills from their gang violence, just so stockholders can make a few more bucks from cheap labor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:49PM (3 children)
Thus "Death by Cop" as a means of "legitimate" suicide if you're in the US.
Along with "it went off while he was cleaning it" - a lot of gun deaths are suicides where the family is covering up the stigma associated with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:16AM (2 children)
That's the same argument I made to the judge when I was arrested for sexual harassment. Bunch of feminazis.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:22AM (1 child)
What, that she went off while you were cleaning her?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:48PM
He slipped and fell with his penis erect right in top of her. That is why his semen was found inside her. It was not rape.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/i-fell-and-penetrated-her-by-accident-millionaire-rape-suspect-claims-a6767486.html [independent.co.uk]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @10:04PM (3 children)
This is Canada. I assure you, doctors/nurses here aren't going to try to push people into dying, just to open up a long term bed. It's just not the way people think, or work. FYI, there's no real 'extra' health insurance here, it's all just part of your taxes.
The biggest concerns around assisted death here, are relatives perhaps wanting it to end quicker. For money.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @10:21PM (2 children)
I might want to add, as typical, Quebec was first on this. When it comes to certain types of social issues .. Quebec is always first. I'm not saying it's the perfect place to live, its economy sure sucks at times, and of course there's all the french :P, but I suppose that's the price for 'people first'.
To highlight this, when this issue first came up, Quebec held public debates. Debates all across Quebec. In town halls of the smallest village, or largest cities, a provincial inquiry setup panels. People were asked to come and discuss. Talk. Give their opinion. We're talking even the smallest towns, in the most far flung rural regions of Quebec. That same panel the collected all of those opinions, presented them.
Frankly, it was one of the most democratic things I've ever seen.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:22AM (1 child)
Let's be clear tho, "people first" means we as a society will rather sacrifice yachts for our millionaires than homelessness and starvation for those of us unwise enough not to choose rich parents.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @01:07AM
What on earth are you babbling on about, heh. Canada is one of the most egalitarian societies on the planet. Your family can be dirt poor, and you'll still see University -- via grants, not loans. And our Universities don't bankrupt you, unlike other places.
But I guess you're not just responding to two words, with inane blather, without first researching the tax system, the grants system, bonuses given for kids, the list goes on. Right?
Troll much?
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @10:54PM (1 child)
It was years ago so I can't be bothered with a link, but Oregon Health Plan (before the ACA) on a few occasions told clients that OHP would not cover their cancer treatment but would cover assisted suicide. One lady was informed in the same letter that said her coverage for her round of cancer was not going to cover cancer drugs but had the assisted suicide drugs as a covered alternative. OHP was Oregon's State health plan for people making less than 40k a year.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:46PM
I originally thought I'd just say your story is improbable and needed proof. But it took less than five minutes of Googling to reveal something like what I suspected - bureaucratic foul-up and not quite on par with what you described.
The individual you most likely referred to was Barbara Wagner. The treatment request was not for frontline chemotherapy but rather a second line treatment called Tarceva which was not covered. The patient had already received front-line treatments. The letter did indeed insensitively state that "other end-of-life options" would be covered despite Tarceva not being an end-of-life treatment and despite end-of-life and palliative options not being directly coupled to restorative treatments like Tarceva. In short, a bureaucratic screwup is what it seems to me, although it could have been a response to something the patient had requested (as in the case of Stephanie Packer of California).
Despite that, all forms of coverage, everywhere, do make decisions about what treatments will and will not be covered because there are not yet resources allocated to supply the conceivably unlimited demand for care. But in this case, it's seems to be a mistake and not intentional.
At any rate, the patient was indeed supplied with Tarceva free of charge from the drug manufacturer. She died three weeks later.
Source A, which refutes several other urban myth stories about medically assisted end of life (or "death with dignity" care. [deathwithdignity.org]
Wayback machine link to original article [archive.org].
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 29 2019, @02:47AM (1 child)
The Supreme Court has upheld lawsuits against the various governments over unreasonable withholding of euthanasia to people with no expectations of recovery whose death is not reasonably foreseeable. What this means is that you don't have to suffer for years for no reason. BTW, suicide and attempted suicide are also not illegal.
Nobody has the right to force people to live with conditions that are torture. Quality of life is more important than quantity.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:11AM
Whaaat?? So this is why every time I was in hospital they kept asking if I have any form of supplemental health insurance??
Fuck me! All those extra insurance schemes (eg. long term disability, nursing costs, etc.) must all be illegal because you said so.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @04:02AM
Nonsense. There's two ways your post is utterly barbaric. First, you're advocating increasing the suffering of millions so that corporations might not have good things. There's plenty of technologies, rules, etc that can be abused. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have those rules. We just need to prevent abuses. You'd want regulation to prevent medically assisted suicide, so we might as well have regulation to prevent murder by such means. Some might think we already have such regulations in place.
But to not do something merely because you can think of a corporation that would benefit? (meanwhile ignoring that there are other corporations that would benefit from banning such suicides.) That envy has no place in a proper civilization.
Second, what is the point of civilization? I think first and foremost it's about making something bigger than us. Not taking it down by expensive, phony morality that consumes resources we could have instead used to make our lives better.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @07:07PM
"Summary" doesn't mean a pile-up of preamble. Cut out the fat and add some actual meat that explains the headline.
In this instance, what did the nurses actually say? If editors don't bother to read the piece, why bother posting/greenlighting it?
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Shire on Saturday September 28 2019, @07:49PM (4 children)
The program was originally called "Responsible Universal Medically Assisted Dying" but the doctors were getting a mixed reaction when they asked them if they would like to participate in the "RU MAD" program.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @08:54PM (3 children)
I wonder how high the pharmaceutical companies will jack up the cost of the red pill.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @10:13PM (2 children)
In the old days, before medically assisted death was allowed, someone in intense pain would typically be on morphine. Often, such poor souls are suffering so badly, that they would keep begging for more.
If the case was terminal, eg deadly cancer, doctors would just slow up up the dose, day after day. We're talking incurables, here, and as the patient's pain slowly became worse, slowly the medication would be upped. Eventually, they'd pass out, and never wake up again.
I frankly can't blame a doctor, and how many could sit idly by and watch someone screaming in pain, day after day, because pain medication would 'kill them'... even when they'd be gone in a few days, weeks?
So.. that was how it was done.
It is a better kindness, I think, to give control to that person... other than to spend weeks with medication one step behind intense agony.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:55PM (1 child)
Morphine is still used for assisted exits, possibly quite widely but it's never publicly talked about. When you have elderly people who are close to death they're often given morphine to "ease their suffering". During the night when their body cycle is pretty depressed anyway the morphine helps them take the final step and they don't wake up any more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:25AM
OMG death panels!! I knew it!! Cut off their healthcare now and let them live free.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday September 28 2019, @07:55PM (9 children)
> those whose sole underlying condition is severe mental illness.
Down the slippery slope we go....
Next, depressed people who have been fired...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @08:28PM
I see that the row of diodes on your left side are all blown...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @08:58PM
death for ODD sufferers! oppositional defiant disorder.
(Score: 3, Touché) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:56PM (1 child)
Yeah, because none of the places where the process is legal have any safeguards whatsoever [deathwithdignity.org], or verification that a patient's condition is in fact terminal and suffering is expected, or anything like that....
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday September 30 2019, @03:53AM
There were 2 Supreme Court cases. The first one was by Sue Rodriguez who wasn't terminal but has a really shitty quality of life, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rodriguez-case-1993 [thecanadianencyclopedia.ca] due to ALS. She lost in a 5-4 decision. When the Supreme Court revisited a similar case, it was 9-0 in favour of allowing assisted suicide with no mention of being terminal, to quote
Of course this freaked out the ruling Conservatives, who as usual were against individual rights other then making money or pushing Christian values, who added the terminally ill part after resisting following the Courts decision.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 29 2019, @02:59AM (4 children)
Depressed people have as much right to decide that their life is not worth living as anyone else. Especially since for every pharmaceutical-sponsored study claiming that antidepressants work, there's a re-analysis showing either that the study is flawed or that the results show no clinical significance.
Sometimes it's only the knowledge that you have a way out that gives you the strength to get through another day. Besides, whose life is it, anyway? Not yours? Then not your business.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday September 29 2019, @05:07PM (3 children)
Depressed people have the right to off themselves as much as people under LSD have the right to jump off the window in panic. It is hard to make an informed decision in some cases. Depressed teen threw herself under a train for a fucking bad grade here, some years ago.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 29 2019, @06:09PM (2 children)
All antidepressants do is dull the mind - but the shitty situation keeps intruding, so higher doses and a variety of drugs are used, to no better long term effect than a placebo. Why put up with a situation that can't be fixed?
After all, your body, your choice. If you judge life no longer to be worth living, and nobody can offer a reasonable expectation of improvement in the future, death is the logical choice, and hanging on is irrational.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday September 30 2019, @02:28PM (1 child)
Depression is not lacking the will to live, it is falling into a negative feedback loop which results in the lack of will to live. Sure you are not unable to think clearly. Except for decisions involving the will to live which is the symptom of your pathology.
That in the current situation depression is a valid state of mind is true, but irrelevant. We are not discussing causes but effects.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 30 2019, @08:16PM
There are people who have zero initiative, are quite happy doing nothing with their lives, dropped out of high school the second day and have no ambition whatsoever. They would be quite happy to live every day the same as the previous one. They don't want a job, or to interact with anyone who has any ambition or desire to be anything but another parasite.
There are men and women like that - self-entitled lazy shits who think the world owes them a living, and that anyone who works is stupid.
But for anyone who has ever had any ambition, a decent job, a career, developed skills that put a roof over their head and food on the table, the prospect of never working again can be hard to deal with. Retirement is scary and shitty. The prospect of spending 30-50 years retired without something constructive to do that meets their needs both to feel useful and to interact with others is something they have a hard time coping with.
why do you think that 2/3 of all firearm deaths in the US are males suiciding? And that the peak is the decade before retirement, when many men who have lost their jobs find they are obsolete. Too old. Can be replaced by someone younger and cheaper and more easily overworked. Volunteer work is less socially acceptable for them than for women as a replacement for "a real job", even though the social network of volunteers, the emotional support, the feeling of doing something useful, is needed at least as much by men, who have many social barriers to expressing how they feel about things on anything but the most superficial level.
It's going to get worse, especially for men, as traditional jobs disappear. A universal basic income isn't going to help with feelings of a lack of self worth. If someone feels that checking out permanently is more desireable than facing a lifetime being prisoner to a system that doesn't let them lead a fulfilling life, it's hard to argue with their logic. Neither drugs that don't really make the problem go away long-term, while having some really deleterious side effects that make it even harder to cope, nor telling them "things will get better" without any rational basis in fact, are going to work.
We're going to be needing a lot more people with soft skills to deal with the social disruptionss that are coming, but there aren't nearly as any men available with the necessary skill set to do peer counselling because it's been seen as a "woman's thing."
Loss of male employed privilege is hard to accept, even harder to deal with. And the social repercussions of loss of such privilege aren't easy either, as those who treated you as an equal now see you as less. Ask any transwoman.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday September 28 2019, @09:12PM (5 children)
No matter, how much nice opiates the medics put in their cocktail, it's still posioning, which might be considered dishonourable by some. Although, from history, we have at least two prominent cases, Socrates and Hermann Göring, who chose to poison themselves so that they'd go out in the most honourable way left to them - what if people consider poisoning in general as terminal loss of face and would rather like to be honourably shot (or beheaded by a skilled samurai who can make sure the head is not entirely separated)?
(Score: 1) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday September 28 2019, @09:36PM (1 child)
You do not differentiate reality much. Sōkrátēs took his cup of poison as a result of legal process. He was valiant. Göring took his poison to avoid hanging as a result of legal process. He was a coward. Reality is created by deeds, not by manipulating meaning of words. But in any case, leaving a final decision about killing people to corporations, for any reason, is a direct pathway to Hell on Earth.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @10:57PM
Goring was just butthurt. He wanted the honor of a military death by firing squad but when denied it chose the poison to the noose.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:58PM (1 child)
Gee, they had terminal illnesses with (as best as can be estimated by medical science) less than six months of life remaining to them as confirmed by at least two physicians?
Sure, totally the same.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 30 2019, @08:22PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @02:42AM
You forgot Putin. He does it but not to himself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:53PM
Some people make a documentary out of it.