The hospice movement is one of the glories of Britain. But not for much longer. Last week, the House of Commons voted against exempting hospices from the increase in employers' National Insurance contributions, and voted to require them to offer assisted suicide.
Pharmacies and care homes were also denied exemptions to the NI increase, but the National Health Service has been spared it. Kim Leadbeater, however, has proposed an amendment to her own Bill, to change the statutory basis of the NHS to include "the provision of voluntary assisted dying services". The envy of the world no more.
Having a state run healthcare system always meant giving the state power over the life and death of all citizens and now we see what this means in detail: ever since 1967, we’ve had taxpayer funded abortions decided by and carried out on the NHS and now we’ll have taxpayer funded assisted suicides decided and carried out by the NHS.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to state-run healthcare. At least in the United States, in the places where abortion is practiced, taxpayers don’t have to pay for it and the state does not carry it out.
The State at least pays for healthcare in numerous countries where this does not apply.
DeleteTaxpayer funded abortion is already a defining characteristic of state run healthcare systems and this soon will be too. It goes along with the lack of patient power, the constant demand to free up beds, and the cold prioritisation of patients by age or need which are inherent in a state run healthcare system (as opposed to one based on patient choice). Even if this were legalised in countries with insurance-based models such as France or Singapore there wouldn’t be the same pressure on patients to end their lives to save beds for others etc, or the terrible choice between assisted suicide or a slow death in a crowded A&E corridor. And where patients have a choice of healthcare provider, any that pressured patients to end their own lives would quickly go out of business.
ReplyDeleteJust as we were all once ordered to stay at home in lockdown to “save the NHS” in future winters when the NHS is overstretched and under pressure, elderly patients will be subtly pressured into assisted suicide in order to “save the NHS.”
Artificial Intelligence is really only one of those things.
DeleteIf it is not the people who can never get over Brexit, then it is the people who can never get over the lockdowns.
It is indeed a thing, and at least helps explain the robotic and repetitive nature of your (often copied-and pasted) posts.
ReplyDeleteYou didn’t read or understand any of what I wrote. But that is the future, and the inexorable logic of a state-run healthcare system, where the state has power over life and death and patients serve the needs of the health system rather than the other way round.
My point is proved.
DeleteThis Bill is now a total shambles.
ReplyDeleteKeir Starmer has just refused to assure Kim Leadbeater that it would even be implemented anytime soon after it had been enacted.
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