Canada’s welfare state is pretty good though. Healthcare is paid for. I would be interested to know what percentage of people using this maid program are doing so specifically for economic reasons.

"Paid for" does not necessarily mean "good" just as "expensive" doesn't necessarily mean "bad."

I'm not trying to opine on the Canadian health care system, as I've never experienced it nor given it much thought, but arguendo, if a part of the calculus for wellness is "is it cheaper to kill them?" that would be a deal-breaker.

(Again, not saying that's what is happening, but I am always skeptical of the payor's ability to dictate the treatment for reasons you can infer)

There's such a sliding scale of what is good and right here, and I think reasonable people can draw their lines at different places. Plot these as points on a line, and I think everyone will draw a line somewhere:

  * suicide should be allowed
  * medically assisted deaths are different from suicide and should be allowed
  * people assisting in death should be prosecuted
  * if it is hard for law enforcement to distinguish assisted suicide from murder, prosecutions are allowed
  * it is okay for your doctor to prescribe death
  * it is okay for the state to encourage death as the most cost efficient means of care
  * it is okay for the state to withhold care if it is too costly to administer
  * it is okay for the state to kill anyone they deem burdensome

A definition of "good" may still contain characteristics that cross a line that a reasonable person has drawn, and I can't imagine how someone might convince another grown adult to draw their line somewhere other than what feels intuitive.

Incentives are different between state and private actors. The state has many tools at it's disposal to encourage or even force suicide (aka, murder in the latter case). The state is the ultimate arbiter of whether or not someone is mentally incapacitated, thus they can determine who lives and who dies.

I can't think of anything more shameful than encouraging a non-terminal person to kill themselves.

There is already a calculus of cost per annum applied to medical interventions in the Canadian health system -- eg, we wouldn't give a heart transplant to a 96 year-old, generally speaking.

Also, suicide hasn't been illegal in Canada for 50 years!

"Canada’s welfare state is pretty good though." It's not. Not at all! If you have a positive experience please share it. Also please provide a comparison, even anecdotal one.

My wife gave birth to our three children. Here are the costs:

First child: $10.00 Second child: $10.00 Third child: $2.50

These were the parking fees for 24 hours (there were no complications necessitating longer stays) in the two different cities she gave birth (the third child was born in a much more rural area with cheaper parking). I cannot stress enough that it cost us $0.00 beyond these amounts.

These costs include the use of a midwife in all three instances, with around 12 visits in advance of birth, then 2 midwives or 1 midwife and 2 nurses for the actual delivery, then 4-6 visits with the midwife post-birth, several of which were in our home.

I would say that’s a positive experience.

I don't follow really. You are comparing $10 to what? I can't think about a lot of countries with 'paid' childbirth. Also while childbirth falls under the health care I wouldn't think about it if asked. Also, lumping parking there? Why? In the poor country I'm originally from ambulance riding is free, and yes, one additional person can ride it too. I would think about illness treating first and foremost if asked about health care. Your comment is just sad to me.

I think the majority of HN readers seem to be American, so the costs are drastically different where births can be 10s of thousands of dollars, even with insurance. That’s why I brought it up.

Any country that does free childbirth and ambulance rides and appointments with doctors and specialists, I would suggest has an excellent healthcare system, even if not perfect.

Nearly all legal residents of the US are either eligible for Medicaid or covered by insurance. The average out of pocket cost of child birth is under $3,000 for people with insurance and free for people on Medicaid.

Births to illegal immigrants accounts for about 5% of child births in the US. These are not covered by Medicaid, but are covered by some state health systems. To my knowledge, Canada does not extend healthcare to illegal immigrants either. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/illegal-immigrants-have...

My brother just had a quadruple bypass and he's recovering nicely. Cost $0.

I had many positive experiences with it when I lived there. It wasn't perfect, but it was far better than what the US has.

I can't comment on welfare etc but the healthcare system is good. I've had mostly good experiences. Probably the worst part is getting a GP.

Healthcare can encompass a lot of things. The NHS is supposedly good on paper but stereotypically it doesn't cover dental.

Similarly, I meant welfare. I think it goes much beyond just healthcare. Unemployment insurance, state help to access the job market, disability help, etc.

It would be nice (though likely impossible) if everyone could have unlimited assistance to make their life manageable. But even if that were available, we need to keep in mind that others may not want to continue their life for various reasons. Just because it is theoretically possible to keep someone alive doesn't mean they want that. Living life feeling like a burden to others, being in constant pain, or drugged out completely to avoid pain is not a life everyone would choose to live.

So if someone chooses to die, don't always look at that as a problem that could have been fixed with enough resources. Sometimes it's not fixable and we all need to compassionately accept that.

I usually find this reasoning to be fallacious. Sure this hypothetical person in an hypothetical setting might hypothetically exist in an hypothetical future. However, bringing it up doesn't provide value to the topic at hand.

Your point doesn't refute what I said, or answer a point I made -- I never said it was always a problem. At best I said it very much was now.

You've apparently never been in a precarious health situation. I have, my mother has, and she chose to end her life because her daily living situation had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer take care of herself. And no amount of money or increased healthcare would have changed her circumstances.

> So if someone chooses to die, don't always look at that as a problem that could have been fixed with enough resources. Sometimes it's not fixable and we all need to compassionately accept that.

There are different forms of acceptance. Yes, accept that some cases are not fixable. On the other hand, we should also be looking at what led to it being not fixable. There is a huge difference between seeking assisted suicide due to deteriorating physical and mental health from medical causes and seeking assisted suicide due to a lack of medical, psychological, and financial support from the outset.

There's a word for people who think health care is very good.... "healthy". There is nothing like illness to dissuade you of that belief. I'm not talking about the cost, or administration of healthcare, which of course is often lousy (esp in the US). I'm talking about it's capabilities, which is a universal problem.

> It's the utter failure of the welfare state from catching people sinking that's to blame.

You can blame policies and programs, but in reality the issue has always been the value of human life.

If human life isn't valuable then ending it is easy.

How does "valuing human life" help people who would be deaths of despair under a program like this? That just sounds like idealism.

Life is ultimately valuable, that's why allowing people to have complete ownership over their own destiny is good.

Forcing people to die in pain, misery, and utterly debased is a misplacement of values in my opinion.

And this is often than not a symptom of capitalist valuation. The value of a life is too often viewed as economic [1].

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354671644_VAluing_L...

> pain, misery, and utterly debased

I think this is because we often see pain and misery as "bad things" that must be avoided at all cost. This tends to lead to the assumption that people who have pain and misery in their lives don't have "good lives" and that the only real option then is to end it.

Pain and misery have purpose and meaning. It can cause people to look beyond themselves. Some very beautiful things have come from people who were in deep pain.

> Some very beautiful things have come from people who were in deep pain.

Could it be cruel to put it this way? I'm imagining people living in pain and misery having their suffering distilled into some sort of artistic achievement or pretty "chicken soup for the soul" anecdote that you can consume from the comfort of your home office or living room.

It's almost like saying that their suffering causes you enjoyment, albeit in a roundabout way.

I grew up Southern Baptist in the rural South where "chicken soup for the soul" type fare was very popular and until I was about 12 I would sit with the women in my family after church listening to them swap stories and many of them would have this sort of flavor. Of talking about people's misfortunes and sharing how sorry you felt for them, or how their struggling led them to do something heroic or noble or caused them to get "saved." Sometimes I would be so moved that the hairs on the back of my neck would stand up and then I would feel bad about the enjoyment I was obviously getting. Like we were emotional vampires sitting around relishing all this bad stuff in our little circle.

Is it bad to share stories of people's suffering and bond over them? I suppose not. It just feels off and I don't know why.

It would be a cruel person indeed that would suggest that someone must suffer in agony because it suits their definition of morality.

Tthe health care system works like that sometimes.

An old person had late stage skeleton cancer, extreme pain, drugs didn't help. He wanted to die. The health care system kept him alive against his will for as long as they could

In that case I suppose the reason was instead covering one's own back.

Even the Catholic church firmly defends such people's right to refuse further treatment, and even to terminal sedation (painkillers that will shorten your life by a lot as a side effect). If the health care system actively kept him alive against his wishes, that's on the health care system.

You are using death as a panacea that makes all other treatments pointless.

It depends on the kind of pain, the kind of misery, doesn't it?

Temporary deep pain, that's one thing.

Permanent never ending deep pain and you're old and just waiting to die, that's different.

Or Alzheimers.

> we often see pain and misery as "bad things" that must be avoided at all cost ... only real option then is to end it.

I never heard anyone say anything remotely like that. I believe you're mistaken?

Did you hear someone say that or you're hypothesizing

With that said, the doctors in the article seem crazy, and this: “MAiD is the new society safety net”

Your judgement that my life has purpose and meaning should not be final if I don't agree. I'd rather not suffer just because you find it meaningful or think I should.

But euthanasia laws require a lot more than him getting out of the way with his belief (common to everyone who stood up from bed today) that life is worth living.

It requires, if he is a doctor, that he gives approval to your choice, and in compassion's name try to relieve you from the burdens of guilt and doubt you might have from your choice.

It doesn't just mean accepting that you say "my life is not worth living", it requires them to say, "Yes, your life is not worth living".

Opponents said this was a can of worms, and it seems harder and harder to deny from what's happening in Canada.

(And to repeat, terminal sedation, treatment that hastens death as an unfortunate side effect of trying to relieve pain, as well as refusal of life-prolonging care, is defended even by hardline opponents to euthanasia laws).

What if the increasing welfare state is what leads to people sinking en masse as we see here?

No. Killing poor depressed people isn't a failure of the welfare state but a deliberate choice by the people behind this program