This was at-home hospice. Very different than when my father died of ALS a few decades later and the nurses were knowingly and purposefully giving him morphine so that he could suffocate in peace as his diaphragm stopped working but at the same time they slowly killed him with the morphine stopping his breathing, thankfully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide_in_the_United...
The nurse shouldn't be making the choice. That responsibility belongs to the family.
The family is likely to hate having to make the choice even more than the nurse does. Does this have any implications?
Yeah, some places have two forms of assisted death available. Fast assisted death, or slow assisted death. Either way, you're getting medical assistance through the dying process. Not sure why some people feel like slow assisted death should be the only option.
To reduce potential for abuse, obviously. I wouldn't trust the average doctor with proper antibiotic dosing, much less a literal killswitch.
"Assisted suicide" is for the grey area of mentally/physically incapable people.
>The nonprofit organization Inclusion Canada regularly hears from people with disabilities who are offered euthanasia, including one disabled woman whose physiotherapist suggested it when she sought help for a bruised hip, said executive vice president Krista Carr.
>“Our response to the intolerable suffering of people with disabilities is: ‘Your life is not worth living,'” she said. “We’ll just offer them the lethal injection, and we’ll offer it readily.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/some-health-care-workers-...
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/09/16/should-e...
Will it still happen somewhat? Yeah probably, but there's also the very real suffering of a human being that needs to be considered. Telling them, "no sorry you have to have a painful and prolonged and undignified death because an insurance company might misuse the option if we give it to you" is pretty messed up IMHO
Just because something bad is already happening doesn't mean it's ok to do something that will make it happen more frequently.
Not to mention the many people who will get assisted suicide who don't have coverage denied, and/or don't have a terminal illness, potentially due to encouragement/coercion from doctors, nurses, family, insurance, etc.
>The current reality of not paying for the assisted suicide is cheaper than the potential of paying for it; how much would it really change behavior?
Now the insurance companies have something cheap to offer. So it gives them an excuse not to offer something better.
And there's also the question of how big the tax should be. Someone with an illness that requires expensive treatment but is expected to not die for a long time might cost the insurance company millions in treatment. Would that tax be millions?
One problem would be in the case of government-run healthcare, or government-run insurance. In that case, to what extent would the tax just be taking money out of one of the government's pockets and putting it in the other? I'm not sure that would disincentive it.
In fact, some doctors, nurses, might consider it good to help fund the government, and thus it might almost be an incentive for them to do it.
Me neither. That's why I'm glad that in any jurisdiction I've seen it available, it always comes down to the patient's choice.
> I want you to think of the million ways things go wrong
Nothing is perfect but if someone is suffering months or potentially years of pain I'm glad that they have the option to choose to end it legally.
> The fact that someone could look at the healthcare system and say "give them the option to kill people" is wild.
Nobody says that, maybe that's why it seems so wild. It's the patient that has the option, not the system. "Give patients the choice of end of life treatment that they prefer" is more like it.
> due dilegence to have direct power over life and death
How do you feel about police carrying firearms with authority to kill base on high pressure, low time, individual decision making?
I'm just saying that social mores line up more with what is pro-social vs. anti-social, not what is good for the individual (which is more ambiguous anyway).
The condition is never named in the article.
The hostile code seems to come from "html-load.com".
Suggest avoiding "buzzfeednews.com" for hosting hostile code.
Karolina's mother died in 2019. This was supposedly 28 years after being diagnosed, which brings us to 1991. And that was when Karolina was 12. (Her DOB is defying attempts at uncovery.)
They supposedly fled Poland around ten years before communism fell, according to a remark in the story, so maybe 1980. But Karolina would have to have been an infant; she wouldn't remember anything about Poland, let alone a camp in Treiskirchen, Austria. Her mom remarked during their visit to the camp, "You chased a boy for bread. [...] You were always hungry.” So at least a toddler, perhaps as as old as 3 or 4?
Maybe they left Poland more toward the mid 1980's; not ten years before communism fell.
JKCalhoun•6mo ago
(The original link broke with my ad-blockers turned on, the archive though is missing one photo from the original article.)
A very powerful read. I lost my mother two years ago and this resonates.
Just realized I read one of the author's books, "How to Get into the Twin Palms".