"Free" Healthcare Morality Watch

One of the problems I have with socialized healthcare is that it takes the responsibility for payment out of the hands of the person getting the care and places it in the hands of a massive bureaucracy that has, depending on the system, either a monopoly on being the payer or at least one of the larger ones.  As such, it has an incentive to cut costs, but its incentive isn’t nearly as personal as an individual payer.  The larger the bureaucracy, the less concern for the individual. 

I’ve noted before how this led to the state of Oregon denying cancer medication to a woman, but still gave her coverage for physician-assisted suicide.  It also leads to a British medical ethics expert suggesting that the elderly should take the same route, for the good of society.

Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people’s lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.

She insisted there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.

The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.

Her comments in a magazine interview have been condemned as "immoral" and "barbaric", but also sparked fears that they may find wider support because of her influence on ethical matters.

Lady Warnock, a former headmistress who went on to become Britain’s leading moral philosopher, chaired a landmark Government committee in the 1980s that established the law on fertility treatment and embryo research.

(A tip of the Blogger’s Fedora to Right Wing News.)

The "leading moral philosopher" in Britain is asking people to die for the good of the state.  What an insane world we live in.

Filed under: Ethics & Morality • Medicine

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