Euthanasia Is Cost Effective

This blog site is titled “what’s wrong with our health care system”. Many of my previous blogs talked about how medical care in Canada got to its present state and my perception of the dynamics of that process. There also have been discussions as to some of the deeper complexities of health care and the roles played by various groups. On the surface what is wrong is clearly evident: long waiting lists for all levels of care, severe shortages of health care providers and technicians, rising costs, and ever increasing inability on our governments to meet their obligations for funding in a society with competitive demands on our tax dollars.
Initially, Medicare was sold on the premise that no Canadian would be refused essential health care for financial reasons. The targeted population was the poor, the chronically ill, and the frail elderly. Compassionate Canadians totally bought into the program as we might expect. Governments saw the opportunity to grab votes for decades, medical groups at the time warned that it would become too expensive, and political activist groups saw it as an opportunity to underscore their philosophy that everyone be equal. This amounted to sabotaging the original intent of the program.
Think about it: when services are rationed who will suffer most?---- the chronically ill and the frail elderly because they need those services more often. When services are rationed, how does that affect the poor? We know that poverty is one of the determinants of health: more chronic disease, more hospitalization and a shorter life expectancy. Again they need the services more often and will be impacted more frequently. So who is really being impacted most by cost containment and cost effectiveness?--- the healthy people in our society or those people that the Canada Health Act was meant to protect? We have to ask ourselves the important question: Who’s to bless and who’s to blame?
Much has been said about which politician and what political party is most “scary”. If we understand that one of the top priorities in our health care system is to contain cost and the above mentioned groups are the greatest cost generators, shouldn’t we expect that group to be most impacted by cost containment. If we understand that a person in Canada consumes at least 60% of their life time cost to health care in the last two years of their life, should we not fear that the financial powers will see that reducing the last two years of life to one year of life could be the most cost effective approach to the problem. Is there a conflict of interest having the same system determine the services provided, who they will be provided to and when they will be provided, and containing cost in a society of competing values. As an aging senior, I find the entire scenario and any person or political party that supports the ongoing “Medicare” monopoly, extremely scary!