Streeting is saying that there is already not enough money for palliative care. So that is a terrible situation for everyone who needs that care to relieve their pain and distress - ie all of us one day. Societally, clearly that says a lot about us, that by and large ‘we’ (not all of us, but enough of us) already see sick and disabled people ie seen as having very little value.
That lack of money for palliative care is what the wealthier ‘I’ll just buzz off to Switzerland’ type of campaigners who (completely understandably) wish to have a death with dignity themselves, should be putting their energy behind. To secure that peaceful end for everyone who is dying, even the least wealthy and the most vulnerable in society, would be a proud achievement.
It’s especially scary when even the Health Minister with responsibility for starting up this service of assisted dying, says it’s too expensive to do properly in the UK.
There’s not really any high enough safeguards that could be applied to do assisted deaths safely in the UK. Because in reality in our social context, ill and disabled people are seen as burdens, our Labour government is actively trying to cut their already meagre benefits. In that situation of poverty illness and disability, people are vulnerable. It will become even easier to manipulate and coerce someone into asking for an assisted death when they wouldn’t otherwise want that. So to my mind, assisted deaths shouldn’t be offered. It is not a safe context for us as a society to do so socially (and financially either)
And obviously, offering an expensive new programme of assisted death at all (..just like offering anything else extra or new..) on the NHS, then takes away from NHS care pot as a whole. That needs to be justified very carefully and evidenced.
Normally, NICE does a review to see if the new thing would be safe to offer on the NHS. NiICE assesses objectively for whether the new treatment or service is, effective for what it’s trying to treat, and cost effective for the NHS to provide. NICE often ends up recommending that the NHS does not provide expensive, but safe and effective, drugs that people want to see on the NHS, on that basis. Have they had a look at assisted dying techniques and the necessary safeguards yet? (No..but why not?)
There seems to be massive disconnect between the campaigners and the theoretical attraction of giving more choice at the end of life, and the reality of what can ever be provided. Nobody seems to want to acknowledge how the existence of this offer will affect others by worsening services for everyone else. It clearly provides a new tool for abuse of the most vulnerable people without the legal consequences for that abuse that an abuser otherwise get. because you manipulate or coerce the ill person into thinking or saying it’s actually their choice. Then the state takes over to make their death happen.
I just don’t see how benefits of this can outweigh the dangers. Death in the UK is not going to be good and easy with assisted death, either. People are imagining that we will have a perfect system. There will be all the usual abuses and postcode lotteries we have now. We don’t have a safe and effective service for palliative care all over the country and we won’t for assisted dying either. The Health Secretary is telling us this extremely openly and bluntly. It feels like some people are thinking theoretically and not about the practical realities of how very badly this will have to be done if it’s put into practice. And how damaging that will be for the choices for other people who are even more vulnerable than they are, as they come closer to dying.