At present people in the United Kingdom who if severely ill would like assistance to die have to go at considerable cost (about 15,000 U.S. Dollars) to a private clinic in Switzerland. Parliament is now looking to make this ‘service’ available on the publicly run and financed British National Health Service.
No-one argued (there is a statist mentality in Europe) that if assisted dying for the supposedly terminally ill(those with less than 6 months life expectancy, though of course an accurate forecast of life expectancy 6 months prior to death is seldom possible!) comes it would be better to make it privately available in Britain rather than publicly run.
The two biggest disadvantages of doing it via the public hospital system are:
– It would make more people apprehensive if they go into hospital they are more likely to be quietly euthanised (to stop costly bed blocking) than cured. It is hardly appropriate for a service supposedly devoted to extending life to alternatively be accelerating death.
– It would be massively expensive in time and money to train up huge numbers of hospital staff to deal with rule and procedures concerning euthanasia, especially as very few ‘eligible’ patients a yea in most hospitals would use it.
Instead why not do as Switzerland does and let such a service be run by just a smallish number of people in some specialist private clinics? There is little complaint about what happens in the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, so why not just copy it? One could even publicly fund it on a means tested basis(as is done with funerals) and still save a fortune compared to locating the facility in the public sector! If assisted dying is to proceed, the private sector, not the public sector is where it should happen”
Geoffrey Berg M.A.(Cantab)