Euthanasia advocates in Canada are pushing for higher pay for doctors who euthanize their patients.
Macleans Magazine published an article a few weeks ago making the case for higher pay for euthanasia doctors.
Euthanasia now is legal just across the border in Canada. At least 1,324 patients have been killed legally by euthanasia in less than a year after the country legalized the killing.
Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker commented on the article this week: “Once the state gets in the business of killing off its citizens via euthanasia, the brutal logic of economics works its way through the system. In Canada, which legalized euthanasia just over a year ago, one of the most important forums for political discussion, Maclean’s Magazine, published an article arguing that doctors ought to be paid a premium for killing off euthanizing terminal patients.”
The magazine profiled British Columbia doctor and euthanasia activist Tanja Daws, who says she is losing money by euthanizing her patients.
According to the report:
All in, a MAID [euthanasia] provider can claim a maximum of $440 [in British Columbia, and $292.20 in Nova Scotia]. That would be a hefty paycheque for a couple hours’ work if that was indeed all the time it took to assess a patient and administer the fatal dose. In reality, it takes much longer.
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… “It’s not sustainable,” says Daws, who describes herself as a “hard-core, passionate-to-the-bone” assisted-dying advocate. Last week alone, she turned down three patients who wanted the service because she couldn’t afford to do it. “It’s not for lack of wanting,” she says, “but it’s financial suicide.”
Later, the article continued:
According to the Canadian Medical Association, assisted dying could cut health care costs by at least $34.7 million and up to $138.8 million a year in Canada. Both [fellow euthanasia doctor Stefanie] Green and Daws now can’t help but wonder whether the decision to set fees so low was a politically or ethically motivated one. “I would hate to think that was the intention,” adds Shanaaz Gokool, CEO of Dying with Dignity, an end-of-life rights organization. “But ultimately it doesn’t matter,” she adds. “Intentionally or not, the outcome is the same: you’re putting up barriers to access, and now that [policy-makers] know, it’s their responsibility to make changes ASAP. If they don’t, then they are intentionally obstructing access with that decisions.”
The legalized killing of human beings, whether through abortion or euthanasia, often is closely connected to money. Even in the United States where doctor-prescribed suicide is legal in several states, patients and doctors are seeing how financial pressures influence the taking of human lives.
Dr. Brian Callister, a physician and professor at the University of Nevada Medical School, said insurance companies denied two of his patients life-saving medical treatment coverage and offered to pay for them to commit suicide instead. The patients lived in California and Oregon where doctor-prescribed suicide is legal.
“Quite frankly, I was stunned,” Callister said. “It’s a lot cheaper to grab a couple drugs, kill you, than it is to provide you life-sustaining therapy. It’s as simple as that.”
There are other confirmed stories of patients being denied medical insurance coverage and offered drugs to kill themselves instead.
Stephanie Packer, a young, terminally ill mother of four, is one of them. The California mother said her state Medicare plan initially refused to pay for her medical treatment but offered to pay for assisted suicide drugs instead.
In separate incidents, Oregon cancer patients Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup also were denied treatment in their state health insurance plans and offered doctor-prescribed suicide instead.
