There are some publications that I will go to just to find something to write about. They typically publish more than enough stupid to fill the pages here for a lifetime. One of those is Jacobin.
Think of a less reasonable version of Slate or Huffington Post, and that’s Jacobin.
I mean, it’s socialist, but not in the manner we tend to think of your average lefty publication. They actually admit to being socialists.
So it’s interesting that a lefty government has managed to enact a policy that is arguably too lefty for even them. At the very least, it’s the wrong sort of lefty.
See, Canada has MAiD, which is basically an assisted suicide law. In theory, it’s supposed to allow people to end their lives with dignity when faced with chronic illnesses. Not just terminal illnesses, mind you, but chronic ones which doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll kill you.
I get why some would want to take their own life due to a terminal condition, but just something that’s simply chronic? That seems a little extreme, but it gets worse. You see, MAiD has become a key point in Canada’s healthcare system. It’s even been floated as the solution to homelessness.
Why is Jacobin upset? Because someone who writes there realized that it’s being used as a cost-saving method for the nation’s healthcare system. The summary at the top of the piece reads:
Canada boasts one of the world’s highest assisted-death rates, supposedly enabling the terminally ill to die with dignity. However, this suicide program increasingly resembles a dystopian replacement for care services, exchanging social welfare for euthanasia.
Is it, though?
What’s their argument?
For want of a mattress, a man is dead. That’s the story, in sum, of a quadriplegic man who chose to end his life in January through medically assisted death. Normand Meunier’s story, as reported by the CBC, began with a visit to a Quebec hospital due to a respiratory virus. Meunier subsequently developed a painful bedsore after being left without access to a mattress to accommodate his needs. Thereafter, he applied to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program.
As Rachel Watts writes in her report, Meunier spent ninety-five hours on a stretcher in the emergency room — just hours short of four days. The bedsore he developed “eventually worsened to the point where bone and muscle were exposed and visible — making his recovery and prognosis bleak.” The man who “didn’t want to be a burden” chose to die at home. An internal investigation into the matter is underway.
Disability and other advocates have been warning us for years that MAiD puts people at risk. They warned that the risk of people choosing death — because it’s easier than fighting to survive in a system that impoverishes people, and disproportionately does so to those who are disabled — is real. Underinvestment in medical care will push people up to and beyond the brink, which means some will choose to die instead of “burden” their loved ones or society at large. They were right.
Except Canadian healthcare is single-payer, meaning the government collects taxes and then uses it to pay for everyone’s medical care. This is something people like those writing at Jacobin have long advocated for here in the United States. They’ve even pointed to places like Canada as an example of how we should do it.
What we’re seeing here is Jacobin lashing out—ignoring their own publication’s previous support for MAiD—because…why?
The answer is pretty simple. Canada is the one paying for healthcare and they’re the one pushing MAiD for people with long-term conditions. Ostensibly, those conditions may decrease the quality of life for some people, but the truth is that it’s being pushed because when the state is footing the bill, they’re going to look at you not as a life but as an expense.
See, to a bureaucracy, you’re not a person. You’re a line item. The individual bureaucrat you’re face-to-face with may see you as a person in that moment, but once you’re out of sight, you’re just an entry in a database and nothing else.
When healthcare is a public expense, there will be some pressure at some point to cut costs. Bureaucrats won’t look around and suggest some of their colleagues should go—after all, others might suggest they go—so they look elsewhere.
People with chronic healthcare conditions incur more healthcare expenditures. This just makes sense. Healthy people don’t need the healthcare system nearly as often, so it would make sense that some people dying would alleviate the burdens on the system.
And Canada is most definitely using MAiD as a cost-cutting program. The Leviathan is looking at line times that we’d call people and deciding that cutting some of them out would be good for business.
The only upside is that it’s still technically voluntary. Nobody is being forced to die just to save money.
Not, yet anyway.
The thing is, when the state is footing the bill for everything, sooner or later, someone’s going to decide that enough money has been spent on some people and it would be better if their heart stopped beating.
People roasted Sarah Palin over “death panels,” but she wasn’t really wrong. Sure, nothing was going to be called that—most people would be uncomfortable with such a term, after all—but the idea would still be in place during a single-payer system sooner or later.
After all, you can’t trust emotional people to decide to discontinue care for the chronically ill and incur potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical treatment. No, you need dispassionate people to do that, and again, patients aren’t people to them, just a file number.
Jacobin wants the system that will invariably lead to people being killed in some manner because it’s not in the state’s interest to continue treating them. MAiD just makes it a little faster.
As a result, they’re upset over a lefty program being too lefty for even their socialist standards, though I suspect the real issue is that it’s tipping the socialist hands on healthcare a little too well for their comfort.
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The term they are looking for is "useless eaters". It's been used before.