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.

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clipsy 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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."

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johnnienaked 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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petermcneeley 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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clipsy 18 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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tptacek 17 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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TkTech 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> 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...

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tptacek 4 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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scosman 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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