Practical Morality

For years, those of us who have adamantly opposed government run healthcare, have been told that we should look at Canada and Great Britain for examples of well-run systems that provide efficient and affordable healthcare for all citizens. Their systems should be the model for the American healthcare system. Those of us who feared government run healthcare believed that it would inevitably lead to rationing of care and death panels where a board of bureaucrats decide who gets care and who doesn’t. The anti-state-run healthcare contingent have been accused of wanting people to die in the streets because they could not afford the healthcare they needed. Government run anything, whether it is healthcare, or retirement system, or schools, always leads to rationing, inefficiency, corruption and waste of whatever they are running.

So, it came as no surprise to me when it was reported in September of 2022, that a 22-year-old Canadian woman, Amelie Champagne, decided to commit suicide, under the Canadian program MAID – Medical Assistance in Dying which became law in 2016. Ms. Champagne believed that life was no longer worth living because she was dealing with the pain and discomfort of the lasting symptoms of Lyme disease, a disease which is completely treatable with anti-biotics. Even if she developed Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, the CDC claims that “Patients with PTLDS usually get better over time, but it can take many months to feel completely well.” It seems very strange that a 22-year-old woman would be unwilling to deal with a few months or possibly a half of year of pain in order to live the remaining 50-60 years of life.