As a believer in personal autonomy (provided others are not harmed), I’m all for the right to commit suicide, whether unassisted or assisted.
But this worries me:
When a “right to die” becomes settled law, soon the right translates into a duty. That was the message sent by Oregon, which legalized assisted suicide in 1994, when the state-sponsored health plan in 2008 denied recommended but costly cancer treatments and offered instead to pay for less-expensive suicide drugs.
The damned bureaucrats should have nothing to do with it.
Comments
13 responses to “A right is not a duty”
In arizona we don’t have medicade in arizona so we pay for neither with many poor people dying because they can’t get treatment. Libertarianism in action!
Whenever the state permits doctors to choose when someone dies, whenever a society crosses that line, sooner or later, usually sooner, we arrive at Aktion T-4. They’re just “useless eaters,” after all. “They have poor quality of life.” “This is death with dignity and compassion.” “They really don’t want to go on suffering.” “Do it for the children!”
The slippery slope is a short one indeed.
The Medicaid Program provides medical benefits to low income people who have no medical insurance or have inadequate medical insurance. The Federal government establishes general guidelines for the administration of Medicaid benefits.
The Arizona Medical Assistance Program provides medical services that are approved by Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS).
People who support laws banning suicide are almost always unwilling to admit this simple, yet obvious truth: Laws banning suicide are based solely on a desire to enforce Biblical morality on other people. Almost all of the people who are named in the Bible and who committed suicide were evil nasty people, like Judas.
Chocolatier, who’s talking about banning suicide? I’m talking about banning doctors from euthanizing their patients and banning “assisted suicide.”
I do not wish to live in a society where the old, the infirm, the sick, the weak, are murdered by their doctors for the crime of being “useless eaters” as a matter of course. I do not wish to live in a society where this is a social norm.
If we can kill this one for being too old, then we can kill this one for being a “mental defective,” and we can kill this one for having a chronic health condition, and it’s not at a great leap to putting “ethnic undesirables” at the top of the list.
These policies make doctors, who should be healers, who should be persons the sickest and weakest should be able to trust and approach without fear, into their executioners. And it makes physicians, who should be private actors with a private business contract with the patient, into agents of the State.
The history of the Twentieth Century shows us exactly where this road leads, and that this road isn’t very long.
‘Who’s talking about banning suicide?’ Your question implies that suicide isn’t already banned. In most states, suicide is a felony crime, although I don’t know of anyone who successful committed suicide and was later arrested and charged.
bernie people have died in arizona because ahcccs would not fund health care for adults without dependent children. A woman at the jc lincoln hospital was told she needed a gall bladder operation but ahcccs wouldn’t fund it because she did not have small children. They told her when she goes critical if she can get to the hospital before she dies they might be able to do it as emergency surgery. Thank god I have medicare so the same thing doesn’t happen to me. The goldwater institute has a law suite trying to stop the hospitals from using self imposed hospital tax to fund indigent health care so people will stop dying who were turned away as not eligible for aches.
I don’t get the go-to assumption that libertarians are against a safety net (assumptions made by some ‘libertarians’ as well).
But I get what captain is saying. A lot of states don’t offer any medical assistance if you happen to be childless and make under a certain amount. Doesn’t matter if you’re unemployed, starving, and are or almost homeless. If you’re childless (especially a non-senior male), below the poverty line, and sick, you’re fucked. Hard to get a job when you’re sick.
Add to it that Obamacare for unemployed non-senior, nonsmoking adults typically start around $200 a month with very high deductibles.
That said, these are Death Panels. Assuming the media does their job, I don’t see this becoming a trend. But that’s a big assumption.
-I still think zonetard is a bot. No human could be that incoherent.
-The left wants complete control over your life; when/if you get born; when you die. And everything in between.
Stan, define “safety net.” Libertarians don’t want to make it illegal for you to donate as much of your money as you want, of your own free will, to private charities that assist the indigent.
I could be wrong, and I welcome correction from any Libertarians who may be present, but I believe that what Libertarians object to is the vast and metastasizing, inherently corrupt, inherently inefficient, government agencies, funded by money extorted from the productive at bayonet point, controlling the nation’s health care systems. Among other objections, it is that sooner or later the bean-counters begin to look at the patients as fiscal liabilities (the six-figure GS18 salaries paid to vast armies of Regional Executive Directors for Diversity Studies and Community Outreach are, oddly, not), which leads directly and immediately to what the UK Health Ministry euphemistically calls “the Liverpool Care Pathway,” i.e., State-sanctioned murder at the hands of physicians.
@Anonymous, first, I’m not a Libertarian, I’m a libertarian (sorry to be so nitpicky, but the distinction is important).
I don’t know anyone who objects to eradicating corruption, few who support inefficient, bloated government, and zero who support euthanasia as anything other than a last-resort in only terminal cases.
Maybe you didn’t intend this, but let’s not conflate support for a government safety net with support for bad government. Maybe those are one and the same, but if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.
Safety net is an ambiguous term, but I suppose I would roughly define it as financial and medical assistance for those who cannot afford to go without, lest they become homeless, starve, or significantly risk their lives for lack of care.
One of my problems with libertarians and conservatives, is that they gloss over the people who genuinely need assistance, often changing the subject to waste, fraud, and abuse of the system.
Can we ever address those issues earnestly? Or does that somehow make us not libertarian?
I should add, that “safety nets” can be either private or government funded. But it’s not a safety net if significant numbers of people fall through.
The reason government had to step in was that private charity was overwhelmed in the great depression and even before that help was well below what was needed. When will libertarians understand since cave men times type a personaltys have had to be neutralized for the common good of every one else, when they said I will eat all of the harvest I want and if their is not much left for everyone else too bad asI am the superman.