To say that if the assisted dying bill isn't passed....

It's still cheaper than paying out on pensions and labour intensive and drug heavy social / health care.

I assume it would be private and very expensive? Why would the State do this? I don’t think any government would be keen, and the litigation could be endless. This will be privatised and privately provided for..

How so? They last proposed a bill like this in 2015. There is no rule that they can’t rewrite and resubmit a better bill for debate within a year or a few. This issue has been rumbling on for over a decade. It’s sad really how rushed and poorly written the current bill is. So poorly written that suspicious types think the holes might not be accidental.

They are already covering themselves as they know we don't have enough medical staff as it is, we don't have enough that will support this. All the discussion about court processes etc given the state of our courts is highly unlikely also

Precisely, @Usernamesareboring1

And yes, @ForRealTurtle, the concept of the whole thing being hived off to the public sector had occurred to me, and the possible consequences don't bear thinking about

I wish there was a pill seriously. In everybody's house, if you wanted to go who you got to smash it and you got to take it. I have said this to the doctors ever since I was young.

It seems you have not progressed beyond this level. If everybody had a poison pill they could take whenever they wanted in their home, then I would expect the suicide rates to skyrocket as there would be no opportunity for suicide prevention in the most common cases of suicidal behaviour which are due to mental illness, not a settled wish to die. I would also expect people to start using them on each other so murder by poisoning would increase. There would also be cases of accidental ingestion by the vulnerable- children, elderly, those with cognitive deficits.

That is one of many reasons why the political marketing framing assisted dying as being a way to avoid suffering and a guarenteed quick and painless, distress free death for you and your loved ones is not what I would call truthful.

The NHS could not fund this for many people. So it would quickly become a service the private sector provide. Clinics staffed by nurses and rubber stamped by a Judge.

Exactly they are already covering themselves as they know we don't have enough medical staff as it is, we don't have enough that will support this. All the discussion about court processes etc given the state of our courts is highly unlikely also.
In Canada there are some "physicians" that are trained and qualified to carry out MAID and that's all they do. Something doesn't sit right with me about the only patient care someone wants to provide day in day out is euthanising people

Research shows that people with paraplegia consistently rate their quality of life as far higher than those around them - once they have adjusted to being paraplegic.
Your view is not unusual i.e. that disabled peoples lives are not worth living and they would be better off dead. It is these attitudes that makes assisted dying dangerous.

I'm not saying people shouldn't ever or won't sometimes still choose death. What you keep ignoring is the massive amounts of people trying to highlight that they did feel that way on a transient way that was totally tied to the lack of support and care they had, as well as their overall experience in society as a disabled person. When you don't address those at all before introducing the choice to die, how is it a choice?

You seem to live in a world without any real world implications. I understand where you're coming from saying anyone for any reason should be allowed to want to die and we don't intervene but when you put that in a real world scenario it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Shall we stop trying to prevent suicide then? What about mental health support at all? Is suicide ideation even a troubling symptom anymore? If I'm suicidal and have attempted to take my own life and I'm rushed to hospital should they not try to save me? I have attempted that in the the past and I am grateful that I was saved and my life is so much better condition wise nowadays than it was when I wanted to end it.

This current bill is just not set up at all to prevent people making a choice that's not really a choice.

Well that's wrong if that's the case but this issue needs addressing and we need to stop avoiding it which jf it doesn't pass will happen as the gov or tge next one won't do

As mentioned upthread the wording changes within tthe bill, but one example is "registered medical practitioners" and on that basis a physician associate might almost be a blessing if the term came to be interpreted loosely

How do you know they don't want to die as somebody who is disabled? Who is vulnerable myself? Who has carers who then watches documentaries with people that have paralysed, who are begging to go, doesn't matter what support you give to some people. You could give them 24 hour 7 support. Why is it that people are not allowed to choose death? I wish there was a pill seriously. In everybody's house, if you wanted to go who you got to smash it and you got to take it. I have said this to the doctors ever since I was young.
Some people exist when I see how some people are. I generally don't think if you had a choice you would live like that and I think it's cruel to expect people to live like that. While I understand there needs to be better palliative care. I agree, so people have a real choice. I also believe That people do need more support if they are disabled or poor but at the end of the day, that being said, really people are human beings and should have a decision in what they want.
To me, this is very similar to the argument that disabled people make about people getting abortions when they find out they re going to have a disabled child

Ok I will take that i do know there is but then they seem to be finding the religious anti abortion stuff who oppose this bill anyway

In 2018, of the MAiD cases in Canada with available data, 50% were unsuccessful by 60 min and the clinician transitioned to euthanasia to complete the ‘assisted’ death.

So with the physician not being able to assist and proceed with euthanasia which was required in that year at such a high rate, where exactly is this guarantee of a swift painless death people are insisting will happen. But apparently no one should highlight that or they're scaremongering 🙄

Exactly and with the way the NHS is run now, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we end up with physician associates and the like not proper medical professionals carrying this out.

The U.K. bill as written doesn’t allow the clinician to utilise euthanasia to boost a failed assisted suicide into death by just “upping the morphine” in cases where a patient has vomited the cocktail and can’t take anything more orally, or it wasn’t quite enough to kill but only to knock unconscious, etc.

Again, it does not have the most robust safeguards in the world nor does it allow for a procedure that would result in the lowest number of distressing complications.

Your posts sound so ignorant to listening to the experiences of the groups vulnerable to being coerced in this bill though. With the way our society devalues and doesn't adequately support disabled people it's very normal for them to have times of wanting to end it, likewise poor and homeless people. They're not feeling like they want to end their life in a vacuum though, and once they have actual support on most cases the feeling of wanting to die passes because they didn't really want to die, they wanted help. This attitude you're espousing that we shouldn't try to prevent anyone from ending their lives because they're sick of their circumstances while not proposing we do anything to better support people is the problem. It's not a choice if you're choosing between dying or nothing, dying and continuing living without adequate care. Have you watch Better off dead? Or listened to any disabled or poverty stricken voices on this issue?

@username8348 the Liverpool Pathway was an attempt to bring best practice in hospice care into every hospital ward. Except it was done on understaffed wards, with some staff who were under trained and/or did not value older or disabled people's lives. That led to many people being put on the Liverpool Pathway and effectively murdered, long before they were ready to die.
The Liverpool Pathway sounded a brilliant idea. Seeing how that was enacted in practice means I can't support assisted dying.

I read this morning in The Guardian that only 5% of people who need hospice care received it. How is it a choice between proper palliative care and assisted dying if currently 95% of people can't access it? So many posters still assuming that anyone against this bill hasn't seen a loved one suffer which is a ridiculous assumption. The stats show the majority of us experienced a loved one dying without proper of end of life care which is not a good position to be started from when deciding if we should be offering assisted suicide.

It’s not being pushed through on a party whip. This is an individual conscience bill.

Lord Thomas made some good points as to the omission of what a judge needs to consider. Currently not very clear. It needs to be.

If it passes both houses, and returns to the Commons, I would hope that the government agrees to draft and hold the pen on amendments while allowing a free vote. I assume that will happen as does with many other private members bills. And you would hope that if this does happen that it is not twisted for political gain. I think that concern is a big one (albeit in the background)

Something being available isn’t being forced, it’s just giving people the option without the suffering.

Even if the bill passes it MUST address these concerns.

If they are not acknowledged, thought about and safeguards put in then there WILL be abuse because the legislation is not robust enough.

The fact that people do not which to acknowledge and engage with some of these points because they are emotionally compromised, is a real concern.

My worry here is that we ARE getting swept away on a tide of emotional blackmail.

The public don't hold the responsibility to their fellow citizens. The public doe not have a responsibility to think of abuses of power. Politicians do. They should be thinking of these things.

And they should block the bill, even if they fundamentally agree on principle that it's right to give the option, if they do not think the process has been adequately debated and safeguards put in. Precisely because it will result in abuse and harm.

This bill is counter to our human rights to life. It should be given the very highest level of consideration and scrutiny. It should not be rushed. It should not be pushed through with the party whip.

Superb post, RedToothBrush, as was the one you added about money being a driver no matter what the sector involved

It occurs to me though that this is another aspect which some are choosing to brush aside because it spoils the "It'll all be fine" narrative - though ironically they're often the very ones who insist the NHS could function properly if only it was adequately funded

In essence this shouldn't really be about competing interests but what works best for us ALL as a society, and however inconvenient they may be to some that has to include the vulnerable

I've read this thread and there are some good points made in favour and against the proposed bill. I really hope that if the MPs who are voting have any doubt or concern, no matter how small, over the legislation that they vote against the bill in its current form. It is too important although, of course, some people will not be happy with that outcome.

Some posters have mentioned the attitudes towards older infirm people during covid and the sacrifice made by the whole population to protect the vulnerable. I can imagine there being societal pressure on the sick person to take the option of assisted dying. This is a scary thought and I am not sure the proposed safeguards are robust enough. As someone said above, laws should be drafted in a cold clinical way, not through an emotional lens, otherwise there is too much scope for abuse of the original intentions.