Politics & Government
MacDonald: Death By New York
New York will now let "health care professionals" convince you how much cheaper it would be for everyone if you just killed yourself.
If you want to “Thelma and Louise it” (the end of the movie, not all the stuff before that), there’s not much to stop you, and I mean that metaphorically. Though I suppose you could do a reenactment, which – aside from ruining a perfectly good 1966 Ford Thunderbird – would bring out the advocates of assisted suicide to claim this is why we need it. As if a few hours of emergency services every now and again is more expensive than maintaining an entire bureaucracy pretending to ensure those with the power to assist you with dying aren’t abusing the privilege.
The former will always be less expensive than the latter, and history, distant and recent, tells us what we should already know. Mistakes, abuse, and mission creep will turn what was marketed as compassion for the terminally ill (some conditions initially apply) into a way for government to solve problems it almost certainly created.
