In the 1990s the National Government were caught putting together health boards whose target was to deny health services to anyone who was deemed too costly to continue medical care for.
The National Party were actively and secretly looking for ways to disqualify the sick and vulnerable from state health care. If they were prepared to do it when euthanasia was illegal in the 1990s, imagine how quickly they will begin to pressure hospitals to start euthanasia as a cost cutting measure if it becomes legal?
We know how poorly Corrections look after the welfare of prisoners. We know how badly CYFs looks after children in their care. We know how damaging Housing NZ, WINZ and the Ministry of Development treat beneficiaries.
So what would stop Government agencies applying the same disregard for the poor and sick if euthanasia is passed?
Look at the sadistic manner in which the Government currently treat prisoners, beneficiaries, mental health patients and the elderly in shitty retirement slums, it is only a matter of time isn’t it before some bureaucrat in Wellington thinks that a really good cost cutting regime would be an advertising campaign for the sick and the poor to be aware that voluntary euthanasia is an option.
NOT TO PRESSURE THEM OF COURSE (wink, wink, nudge nudge), but just to “educate” them about their options, and before you start complaining about my analogy, why would you try and stop an education campaign?
Surely the sick and the weak and the poor have the same right to be informed of their “voluntary” options as the rich alpha personality types who currently demand the right to end their lives?
If a Wellington bureaucrat can argue that an advertising campaign to make weak and sick people currently costing the health sector a fortune could in fact result in a 5% jump in euthanasia and save them tens of millions, do you honestly think that wouldn’t happen?
Don’t argue to me about how other nations have voluntary euthanasia and these issues don’t occur there, those countries also have decent welfare systems that aren’t run by sadists. Look at the naked and gleeful sadism most public servants treat prisoners and beneficiaries in New Zealand, do you think they wouldn’t push for euthanasia options once it was made legal?
The State is the biggest threat to the people and giving it legal euthanasia would be the most worrying threat to our human rights. This isn’t about the individuals right to end their life, this is about stopping the State from having the right to kill the poorest and weakest amongst us.
+100 …excellent POST
And various studies show that the overall suicide rate increases once physician assisted suicide is introduced.
Once you legalise suicide i.e. make it OK, normalise it then guess what happens.
Quite apart from the effects on the weak and unwanted.
…and quite apart from the effects on the old and weak ( due to prescribed opioids)…very much loved and wanted!
….and those denied legal homegrown cannabis for their pain and well-being
….there is another word for this state of affairs and it is legalised murder
The fact of the matter is euthanasia is already being practised with the denial of access to medicines based on cost.
!/3rd of the 108 medicines currently on the waiting list on the 30th of June 2018 was applicable to 235,000 people being denied access if they didn’t have to money to pay for it.
If 1/3rd of of 108 is around 35 meds imagine what the true number of people are who are self funding.
Almost every week a new story is published in the newspapers of families in stress due to medicines underfunding which then loads extra costs on to hospitals and increases waiting list.
It is time people you stopped sitting in dream land believing we have a first class health system we dont.
On the world health organisations rankings on health care we rate 41st and the usa is 37th take that in for a second.
As I have said before take alook at http://www.priorities.nz and the facebook group UNDERFUNDING OF MEDICINES BY PHARMAC and realised our health system has already been privatised and euthanasia installed by stealth.
You don’t seriously think that anyone thinks we have a first class health system. There are many common health issues that are no longer treated in the public health system unless you are crippled. My family has a history of hernias, both my parents, 2 brothers, a son… These were all ‘tax funded’ back in the sixties. It is disgraceful that we have this situation. Health is so underfunded and has been for years. And if there is any suggestion that taxes need to increase in some areas
How many MPs have health insurance, by far the majority I am sure – they don’t work hard enough to get our health service back to where it was in the sixties, frankly why should they care. And the MPs or ex MPs that have had stomach stapling done because they have good incomes and can afford to have this done. Shipley, Bennett, Tolley and these are the people who tell others how they should live – what a nerve.
I am absolutely and totally opposed to the bill it is the thin end of the wedge. Lots of people with mental health problems will ‘opt’ for this despite not being of sound mind. In the Netherlands the number of people in mental institutions who have ‘opted’ for euthanasia has increased every year.
Martyn, at last someone recognises that state sponsored killing is an issue, but if you are truly serious about fixing climate change, you would admit that not only is euthanasia a possible solution it is possibly the only solution.
When the Titanic went down the order went out to save the women and children first. It was obeyed without question and a good portion survived. The old and decrepid went to the back of the queue. No one complained.
That shows you what our problem is …us. We are too selfish today to behave in the courageous way that the passengers of that generation did. We would trample our way to the front to save our precious skins.
There are two choices: we have to reduce our human population … and who will organise that if not the gvernment, or the sheer density of our overpopulated species will generate a super-flu that will do the job for us. Thats what the tealeaves say.
@ DENIS DORNEY
countries which over-populate should not be allowed to immigrate to countries where the citizens are not breeding out of control for their environmental balance ( they should get their own cultures in order and solve their problems at home)
….many women and men in New Zealand limit the number of children they have, if they have any at all
….we should not be responsible for taking in people from ecologically unaware and misogynist( women dont have equal rights to education and contraception) countries where they have over-breed and trashed their environment eg. China
….to advocate euthanasia on New Zealand’s elderly and vulnerable (whose families have paid tax all their lives for a good health system) in order to cater for stresses on the health system created by overseas immigrants is an abomination…. murder
Red Buzzard. just for the record I am 78 and therefore one of those “elderly and vulnerable (whose families have paid tax all their lives for a good health system”. so I may be picked to sacrifice my life for the greater good if the data shows that is the best option. Clearly you will not make any sacrifice at all; you will leave that to someone else. What would you have done on the Titanic?
Well some New Zealanders actually want to die….if that is your case …then go for it! ( but please dont use euthanasia as a noble pretext)
…and dont argue euthanasia/murder for New Zealand’s elderly as a sacrifice for the “greater good”)
….please dont cast aspersions on New Zealanders, who think that the elderly and disabled should be cherished and that they have intrinsic value as elders with wisdom
… please dont try and cast aspersions on elderly New Zealanders who want to live on despite their age and fragility…many of them are much loved and valued !
…elderly New Zealanders should not be guilt tripped and forced into walking the plank and being euthanaised/murdered against their will
…you cast aspersions as to what I would have done on the Titanic…but do you know what you would have done in Nazi Germany?
shit..!,,that exchange quickly spiralled out of control – the nazi card – already..!
This is a waste of time. You ignored the questions that dont fit your argument.
and it is clear that red buzzard thinks that he/she been there in nazi germany – that they would have stood up to/against the nazi machine – what complete and utter bollocks/bullshit he/she is spouting..eh..?
Yeah!! A supporter at last, Phillip. Thats two out of 4.5 million who can see the problem and have the nerve to face it.
I really cant see what the pitiful NZ taxpayer has to do with reducing world population, Mr Buggard, but I guess that when you are too petrified to face facts you will use evasions like this.
do you seriously think “reducing world population” will be achieved by killing off our New Zealand elderly?
….in Western secular countries where scant respect is given to Catholicism and women have more equal rights to contraception , education, job opportunities etc… the population growth is flattening or going below replacement
…why kill off elderly New Zealanders?
…the focus should be on overpopulated countries and countries which have out of control birth rates
( patriarchal countries which have trashed their environment)
…they should be made to live with their overpopulation problems and remedy them
….maybe women’s rights would be a good start
Martyn;
With you all the way on this one, buddy. Hammer it. Over and over.!
As soon as this legislation first appeared I had visions of what occurred
in Nazi Germany.
The rounding up of all the mentally ill and intellectually handicapped
for ‘elimination’.
And with the huge increase in autistic children and other syndromes
in recent years, are we setting ourselves up for a repeat sometime in
the future?
I fear that TPTB / Oligarchs / Globalists that control us all today
would leap at the chance if they thought they could indoctrinate
us enough to ‘see reason’. (Just think of the cost, you see.)
These people are population control freaks from their very own literature.
And with the same sort of people in charge today, history tends to repeat.
Cheers.
Doesn’t Holland already give the legal euthanasia status to children up to
the age of 3yrs or is it five?
+100 Iain MCLEAN
Martyn, you have (again) set up a straw man argument. When (not if, surely) euthanasia is eventually introduced, the numbers actually choosing it will be so small that the “cost savings” due to these people no longer needing medical care will be negligible. Rapacious public servants are, on this matter, a non-issue.
Don’t imagine thin-ended wedges that aren’t actually there.
Actually, most of those in favour of euthanasia need only the comfort and security of knowing that the choice is there, should they become terminally ill and at risk of descending into intolerable pain. Only a minority will actually take the choice.
Me, the one that I worry about is dementia. I define myself by (inter alia) my intellect and my power of thought. If I lose my mind to Dr Alzheimer, then I am no longer me, merely a husk that physically resembles my former self. In that case, continuing existence would, to my present adequately-functioning mind, be worse than non-existence. (Have you visited a dementia care facility?) Of course the practical question is how to choose death when overtaken by dementia, but that’s another (and not necessarily intractable) matter.
@ TOM GARDNER…have you thought about the fact that many so called doctor diagnosed dementia patients are actually drugged up to the eyeballs with opioids and BIG PHARMA drugs?
…if you want to avoid dementia steer clear of doctors and painkillers and BIG PHARMA opioids
… grow some garden herbs
https://www.sciencealert.com/marijuana-compound-thc-removes-toxic-alzheimer-protein-from-brain
https://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Cannabis-may-offer-cure-for-dementia-study-finds-490233
( and if you are still demented, at least you will be happily demented so you wont mind in the slightest)
yes i support med-pot – but when you are in serious pain – opiods are what is needed..
and i’ve never had fentanyl – but i do know that heroin is a much better all-round pain-killer than the medical option – morphine..
i oppose this legislation for the same reasons detailed by the author..
and i wd also urge the allowing of prescibing of heroin for the terminally ill..
‘cos as william burroughs observed – you can be siting in a prison cell staring at yr shoe – and if you have enough heroin in yr system you will be feeling just fine…
so give the teminally ill/suffering all the heroin they want/need..
there are no grounds to argue for euthanasia on ending pain grounds…so there really are no grounds for arguing for euthanasia..
Another classic straw man argument attacking the natural human right to die with dignity.
Just because one person might potentially be pressured to accept that option, you would deprive tens of thousands of people the opportunity to avoid the horrors that await them because of the nature of their injuries or illness.
Will you be there when they cry out for mercy? Will you be the one to tell them no, they must accept their pain regardless? That they have to linger for years, incapacitated, soiling themselves, unable to live anything resembling a life of dignity because YOU say so?
If you forced a dog to die in agony, you could be convicted of abuse, but if you force a human to endure the unendurable, you think of yourself as a principled individual, doing what is “right”, damn the cost in human suffering.
Except there is this one little fact that never seems to get mentioned amongst all these esoteric arguments; 80% of all health care budgets are spent on palliative care. If Euthanasia were legal, that’s a lot of boats and houses in Remuera, and kids in private schools the medical profession would have to kiss goodbye. If you’re in any doubt of this, just look at the astonishingly well organised howls of objection that rise up from the strangest quarters every time this topic comes before parliament. You would be forgiven for thinking there was a lot more at stake than a dubious philosophical argument.
It costs a lot to die in our society, and that is no accident.
Those on what used to be the sickness and invalid’s benefits (or on ACC), that are chronically ill and disabled who are aged between 40-64 and childless will be a first to have euthanasia ‘suggested’ to them if this bill becomes law. They are the ones regarded by the powers that be as the biggest burden on the state, having borne the biggest brunt of the government’s bonfire of services in the early 1990’s and have missed out on the many cash payments both parties have doled out in the past 15 years or so,
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