Hacker News Reader

Comment by scosman | Hacker News Reader

I don't follow the author's logic. They seem to assume anyone choosing MAID has been failed by the healthcare system. While that's certainly possible for some of cases, every single person eventually reaches a point where their health is failing. Many know in well enough advance, and in Canada you can choose to decide when/how to end things.

The health care system can and should be improved, but there will always be people choosing MAID regardless. We should use a different measure for how to improve healthcare, and not falsely correlate MAID as a failure metric.

View on HN

This is completely dismissive. People are choosing to kill themselves and the government is helping them do it. The question is why?

"We should use a different measure for how to improve healthcare, and not falsely correlate MAID as a failure metric." No this is actually a perfectly legitimate question. Are people choosing to kill themselves due to a lack of available healthcare?

Is the government using assisted suicide as a mechanism to relive a overburdened medical system? Legit questions. Dont dismiss them.

The anti-MAID brigade has been asking "legit questions" for ages and has yet to come up with anything resembling actual data supporting their view. At some point the burden is on people pushing to eliminate the program to actually argue their point rather than "just asking questions."

I think people should be allowed to exit when they wish.

I just dont know if they government should be involved with this to the point of counseling people to kill themselves. It leads to all sorts of perverse incentives.

Neither the government nor anyone else is "counseling people to kill themselves," medical professionals are counseling people on the option with strict regulations on who they can provide the option to and how they can present the option.

Careful. The reporting in The Atlantic says otherwise:

"Perhaps the now-suspended Veterans Affairs caseworker who, in 2022, was found by the department to have “inappropriately raised” MAID with several service members had meant no harm. But according to testimony, one combat veteran was so shaken by the exchange—he had called seeking support for his ailments and was not suicidal, but was told that MAID was preferable to “blowing your brains out”—that he left the country."

That's followed by an anecdote in which a Vancouver patient in a suicidal crisis claims a hospital clinician said there were no beds available, but that MAID would be a "more peaceful" option than suicide.

No idea how widespread these cases are, not making any claims, just saying there's reporting around this.

> Perhaps the now-suspended Veterans Affairs caseworker who...

They were immediately fired, referred to the RCMP for investigation, and a systematic review launched that found 4 incidents[1] - all by the same employee. There have been no further incidents reported since this happened. Since 2022.

> That's followed by an anecdote in which a Vancouver patient in a suicidal crisis claims a hospital clinician said there were no beds available, but that MAID would be a "more peaceful" option than suicide.

This was in 2023. It was covered a bunch at the time until it was revealed that it was a standard question asking if she had ever considered MAID before[2], since she had a history of depression and suicidal thoughts.

The Atlantic reporter you're referencing is themselves anti-MAID due to her religious convictions and wishes to remove choice from individuals. It is not an unbiased source of information. The MAID system is _routinely_ criticized from the religious base here in Canada for the last 9 years, and yet not even a hint of systematic abuse of the system has ever been found.

[1] https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/about-vac/reports-policies-and... [2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/arti...

I don't know anything about the author and I don't care --- the reported incidents either happened or they didn't. It sounds from this comment like they did.

A person being suggested MAID instead of actual help they're asking for is data. A person refused a treatment and left to suffer agonizing pain is data. The data is there; it seems like you just don't give a fuck.

No one dismissed asking a question. I'm pushing back against a logical hole in the argument. Even with better healthcare, everyone's heath eventually fails. Using something that happens to 100% of people as an indication of anything is a mistake.

You introduce several forms of asking "why" as a reaction to my comment, but that's exactly what I argued for: a better metric with the actual possibility of causation.

I only personally know one person who has chosen MAID. He was a close family friend and was very ill. He decided that once he got to the point where he could no longer walk that he didn't see any further point in living. There was nothing more any medical system could do for him. He reached that point and he died on his terms.

I also had family member die recently; he was 95 years old. At 85 he said it was time to go into a home and went and did that for a few years. But at 95 he just decided he was done. He told everyone and then he just stopped eating. Within in a week he was gone.

according to chatgpt, 25% of people die of cancer in canada; presumably dying of cancer is a lot worse than MAID so one might expect this number to grow beyond 5% unless there are just that many people that object to it for themselves on philosophical grounds

According to StatsCan it is actually a bit more, but varying year-to-year. Pre-Covid it looks like it was closer to 27% or 28%, now closer to 26%. So a lot of room to grow, if we made the assumption that all those dying of cancer would prefer to choose their date of passing. Personally, I think the more immediate source of growth in the number of MAID administrations should come from those who died after requesting MAID but before MAID was able to be administered, which would give an increase of 19% in administrations.

Statistics Canada. Table 13-10-0392-01 Deaths and age-specific mortality rates, by selected grouped causes https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=131003...

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications...

Do you have an actual source? I'm not saying these numbers are wrong, but anything started with, "according to chatgpt" has already lost the plot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com