THE United States Supreme Court recently struck down the Bush administration’s attempt to block Oregon’s death with dignity law.
That decision should be a wake-up call for Americans and Canadians who are concerned about the future of health care.
The court ruled on a narrow legal issue and did not directly support death with dignity. Yet it has pushed the broader principle back on to the public agenda.
The Supreme Court of Canada has also considered this issue and ruled against physician-assisted death in one particular case. But that did not stop Sue Rodriguez from getting help that allowed her to die with dignity.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
It shows that people who are desperate for effective medical care, and who cannot get it, will do just about anything, legal or otherwise.
One Canadian straw poll I heard about showed roughly 90 percent of respondents favour death with dignity.
In the U.S., where people get Canadian-styled health care only if they have lots of money, millions of people have no health-care insurance. Millions more are under-insured.
Many people in those situations become desperate. They may see the only solution for their problems as death with dignity, often described, incorrectly, as assisted suicide.
This is particularly important as some Canadian politicians and entrepreneurs push for the dismantling of our national health insurance program. Medicare has been a key feature of Canadian health care for roughly 40 years.
It has served us well; not perfectly, but well.
My fear, and the fear of many others, is that the policies of Stephen Harper and the “reformed party,” now hiding behind a Conservative label, will move Canada toward a U.S.-styled health-care system.
We know from Harper’s comments during and outside the just-concluded federal election campaign that he favours the ultra-conservative philosophy of the Bush administration.
In such a philosophy, the unforgivable sin is failing to make a profit when there’s a profit to be made. And huge profits can be made by private health insurance companies.
One feature of our federal election campaign was piecemeal policy presentations on specific, limited issues. There was no fundamental and overall visioning. There was no comment about plans by one corporation to set up for-profit medical clinics across Canada starting next year.
What we need is a fundamental, community-wide discussion on what kind of medical care Canadians want.
The person who may be able to help us with this is professor Peter Singer, the director of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.
Singer and some colleagues developed the plan to help ordinary citizens engage in public discussion of heath issues.
These include town hall meetings, multi-media presentations and extensive use of telephone and internet.
Singer says the project will give citizens a new way to talk to governments and each other, and provide politicians with advice on issues.
Without that kind of fundamental dialogue and attention by politicians, medicare and many Canadians may die a death without dignity.
Rob Brown is a former agricultural writer and broadcaster now doing studies in ethics. He can be reached at cedarrbb@netscape.net. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Western Producer.
