Mushrooming health subsidies are creating sick incentives for government to push suicide

 Speaker Mike Johnson this month blasted the United Kingdom’s brand-new assisted suicide law, which will allow doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives.

“Any society that rejects that truth about life as a gift from our creator and adopts a culture of death . . . is in the process of crumbling,” Johnson (R-La.) warned.

He’s right. Alas, parts of America already welcome assisted suicide.

Eight states and Washington, DC, permit medically assisted death for their own residents.

Maryland considered an assisted suicide bill this year.

Oregon and Vermont allow doctors to help patients from other states kill themselves.

Roughly 8,700 Americans have died by assisted suicide since 1997, when Oregon became the first state to legalize it.

The growing acceptance of assisted suicide is concerning. When governments are responsible for the cost of their citizens’ health care, they have a perverse financial interest in their demise.

Consider the history of assisted suicide in the Netherlands, which became the first country to legalize the policy in 2002.

Medically assisted death is now mainstream there. More than 9,000 Dutch people died by assisted suicide last year — roughly 5% of national deaths; 33 couples agreed to die together. 

Some people who opt for medically assisted death aren’t terminal.

Under Dutch law, patients experiencing “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement” — whether physical or emotional — can apply for assisted suicide. 

Consider a 29-year-old Dutch woman who died in May with a physician’s help: She had struggled for years with mental illness and been told her suffering would never improve, per the Free Press.

Or take two healthy seniors who died together in June. The husband had back problems; the wife had early dementia.

They left behind a son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.

Similar stories abound in Canada, which legalized assisted suicide in 2016. Since then, nearly 45,000 Canadians have died using doctor-assisted suicide.  

That number is quickly rising. In 2022, over 13,000 Canadians chose to end their own lives with a physician’s help. Those deaths accounted for roughly 4% of the nation’s total. 

The logic of assisted suicide makes financial sense for the Netherlands, Canada and other countries with socialized health care.

Governments covering their constituents’ medical bills benefit from shuffling off the sickest patients a few weeks or months early.

In fact, there’s evidence to suggest nations consider cost when formulating — and implementing — policies of life and death. 

In a 2017 paper, two scientists from the University of Calgary in Alberta predicted that Canada’s new assisted suicide law could “reduce annual health care spending across Canada by between $34.7 million and $138.8 million,” exceeding the $1.5 million to $14.8 million in direct costs associated with its implementation.

Canada seems to have taken those figures to heart. A report from Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner found that vulnerable and impoverished Canadians sometimes experience “potential coercion or undue influence” to die at a doctor’s hands, even when they might not have chosen that route on their own.  

One man in his 40s suffering from inflammatory bowel disease chose assisted suicide after his psychiatrist “asked him if he was aware of MAiD [Medical Assistance in Dying] and presented information on the option.”

A “MAiD provider” drove the man to his death. His family “had concerns about his request for MAiD,” according to the report. 

One father of young children requested assisted suicide after a car accident left him a quadriplegic.

The United States has not yet traveled as far down the road to socialized medicine as Canada or Britain. But the government is in charge of more of our care than we may realize.

This year, Medicare will cover more than 61 million seniors. Medicaid and the related state Children’s Health Insurance Program cover nearly 80 million people. More than 21 million purchase their health insurance through the government-run Obamacare exchanges. 

Together, Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly 40% of national health expenditures, or more than $1.7 trillion.

Those are eye-popping figures. One day soon, medical assistance in dying may look appealing as a way for the government to avoid paying for expensive procedures for those who need them. 

When the state is charged with paying for someone’s health care, its incentives don’t always align with those of its citizens.

Sally C. Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, is the author of “False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All.”

https://nypost.com/2024/12/20/opinion/growing-health-subsidies-are-creating-sick-incentives-for-government-to-push-suicide/