They actually published a report out of Alberta, out of the University of Calgary, and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, that ‘medical assistance in dying’, also known more accurately as murder-suicide (soon, we might think, just plain murder) that putting the old, the sick and the just plain tired-of-life to death will save a whole whopping $139 million.
They break down the costs further: $25 for the drugs to put the patient, well, to ‘sleep’, with a total of $269 to $756 for ‘physician services’. Not cheap, for all those well-compensated fresh-faced docs, but the labourer deserves his wages, does he not? All that work, jabbing in a syringe, sombre of expression, with a faint note of sympathy, and a nod of the hypocritic, excuse me, Hippocratic, brow. But was it not the great Hippocrates who said ‘first, do no harm’? If I had no conscience, and no moral compass, no belief in God, and little belief in Man, at least in Man suffering, I would do it for a lot less.
The $139 million saved, as the article rightly admits, is chump change in the big scheme of things, as the labour and technological costs of medical services go through the proverbial roof. According to the Alberta Health website, the province spends $2.4 million per hour on treating the sick, $58 million per day, and $19.7 billion per year, with $5 billion of that on physician salaries.
And that is only in Alberta, with a population just over 4 million, which means about $5000 per person per year on medicine. So all the killing won’t save that much. At least, not yet.
But the fact that they are now bold enough to count the costs, or, pardon me, the savings of death is significant. This is not all about money, but it is at least partly. And as more people choose death, or are chosen for death, one may presume that the savings will go up, especially when things get all the more efficient and streamlined. Just read the 1967 dystopia Logan’s Run.
Canada is a country mired in death, with no laws governing the abortion free-for-all, and only flimsy ones restraining the current spate of murder-suicide. The paper-thin conditions will be struck down in our compliant courts, until whoever wants to die, can, all paid for by the benign State, hiring its lab-coated assassins, its victims tidied up, cremated and forgotten.
And our puerile Prime Minister rants on in his jejune manner about the oil sands and climate change, feminism and women’s ‘rights’, sipping a Timmy’s double-double, and posing for selfies.
Meanwhile, south of the border, President Donald Trump has already put forward two highly significant pro-life policies, with his Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, declaring, in public, in a press hearing, for all the world to hear and grasp, that “The President has made it very clear that he’s a pro-life president. He wants to stand up for all Americans, including the unborn“.
I keep wondering if it is time to dust off our feet and move it on south to America.
Then again, perhaps we can await a Paul-like conversion for our country. One never knows.
So a blessed feast to all, as we make our own journey to Damascus….