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Comment by CosmicShadow | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a stretching propaganda hit piece from the anti-abortion crowd stretching into calling the "current" Canadian Government in power a "regime" that kills poor people by...get this...convincing doctors to convincingly get poor and unhealthy people to go past every fucking alarm bell and human instinct and literally kill themselves with their assistance to somehow be less of a burden on the state? Somehow a small group of people killing themselves will make any difference financially or politically somehow to a country or party? And every comment against it seems downvoted, yeah ok....

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I suggest you do a little reading. I'm Canadian and it's alarming.

It's already apparently 2.5% of deaths in Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assi...

We have credible reports of a person aged 23 who was approved for medically assisted death because they were diabetic and depressed. https://www.thefp.com/p/scheduled-to-die-the-rise-of-canadas

The top 1% of patients use approximately 30% of the total cost of health care. https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...

The Canadian health care system is extremely strained. We are already in an age of hallway medicine as there aren't enough staff to treat the people in rooms. https://www.cma.ca/news/canadas-health-care-crisis-what-we-n...

The breakdown of MAID by main condition is interesting, and suggests that the vast majority (~70%) are cancer patients avoiding a painful, prolonged and terrible death.

This would also suggest that once we get even better at cancer treatments, the rate of people dying to MAID will drop dramatically.

Later in the stats, ~80% of people have lost the ability to engage in activities of daily life (which IMO is a terrible place to be).

I don't think your reference supports your claim at all. In fact, it suggests that it's doing exactly what it is meant to do: ending unnecessary suffering for those who are dying of diseases we don't yet have a cure to.

There have also been many reports of people, mostly disabled, who are unable to work or afford rent in Ontario, who have applied to medically assisted death rather than face homelessness. This might be both brinksmanship and gamesmanship, but it's extremely distasteful that we are here as a society.

Your claim requires some specific evidence (reports meaning one, two, ten?), and that would need to be both weighed against the immense relief in suffering enjoyed by the people who are demonstrably benefiting now, as well as the freedom for people to control their own destiny.

> I suggest you do a little reading

You're of course welcome to be on either side of this issue, but please edit swipes like that out of your comments here. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

(Your comment would be fine without that bit.)

Hi dang,

Sorry about that. I meant it neutrally but that didn't come across. I won't post again anything that suggests snark.

Thanks, Will

Appreciated!

> go past every fucking alarm bell and human instinct

This is mind blowingly archaic as an attitude and very dangerous. Maybe you don’t know many people or are lucky to only be surrounded by mentally healthy individuals but many in the spectrum of depression and other ailments which are pretty common feel suicidal. They fight the urge not to consider this fate. If a doctor comes and tells them maybe you should consider killing your self, it’s alright, I’ll help you, guess what, they’re going to feel utterly helpless.

Agreed that MAD for cancer patients and patients with unimaginable incurable chronic pain is not bad, but there needs to be immense scrutiny into every case where this dangerous tool is used for people who have mental disorders.

It's a real weird wedge issue for sure. Many stories portraying poor and disabled people resorting to MAID are being pushed by historically conservative and right leaning publications (ex. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11516989/Canadian-m...).

MAID didn't create or change the conditions these people are in and it's not like the Conservatives pushing this narrative are known for anything but outrage and cuts to social safety nets..

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