None of the proposals under discussion would ban abortion. None would take away your right to buy abortion coverage with your own money. None would force you to pay for somebody else’s abortion. These are the conceptual parameters on which all sides have, for the time being, agreed.

So they already clobbered Congress into making special complicated arrangements for abortion foes (so called pro-lifers). Only for this vociferous group. Not for other special interests or religious convictions.

Abortion, we’re told, is different from other issues caught up in the health care debate. It’s a question of ultimate values, impervious to compromise. [...]
Each side has legitimate worries. Pro-choicers fear that insurers will abandon abortion coverage. Pro-lifers fear that insurers will be forced to include it. Pro-choicers fear that women won’t buy abortion coverage if the premiums are separated up front. Pro-lifers fear that abortion opponents will be suckered into abortion coverage if the premiums aren’t separated up front. We’ll have years of studies, hearings, legislation, and lawsuits to follow up on these concerns and fine-tune the policy.Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2239647/

• “Pro-lifers” are opposed to abortion and thus want to make sure their money does not go towards funding someone’s abortion
• Well I am opposed to paying for the war in Iraq.  Did they make special income tax arrangements for me? Those in favor of the Iraq war can pay a special additional war tax.
• I am also against nuclear weapons. Those who want the US to have nuclear missiles should opt into a special nuclear tax option.
• I am opposed to keeping people alive in intensive care, when they are brain dead in a coma. Or when they are terminally ill and in pain and are not allowed to die.
  • Some of these guys live for 15 years in intensive care in a coma.
  • Very expensive.
  • Can I please have a health insurance exemption so I don’t have to pay for that?
• I am totally profoundly against this artificial prolonging of life,  I consider this torture.  It is against my consciousness and against my religion.
• It is unnatural. In nature, very sick animals and people get mercy killing by predators.

The above items are ultimate values for me. No compromise is possible. They are my religious belief, so by no means I must be forcet to pay for unjust wars of aggression and painful prolonging of life a against a person’s will. My beliefs on the follwing items are a little less strong, still I think I deserve exemptions in order not to pay for the following items:

• I am also against paying for diseases people caused to themselves. I don’t want to pay treatment for people who
  • committed suicide attempts
  • abuse alcohol and drugs
  • do extreme sports and have accidents due to their recklessness
  • engange in criminal activities and get shot by police or rival gangs
  • overeat
  • don’t exercise

• I live in a hot state. I am also opposed to treat people for frost bite. That should be an add-on.
• I live on ground floor. I don’t want to pay for elevator maintenance.

So we should have 15 different voluntary private add-on insurance options for each of the following: comatose, terminally ill, obese, self-endangering, reckless, criminal, drug addicted, alcoholics, ……

Note the absurd idea that parents or young people will, at extra cost,  add insurance for abortion, criminal activity, drug addiction. They will presume that they will not engange in these behaviors, that they will not need the insurance.

This is religious zealots’ terror.  If you are against abortion, then don’t do abortion. But leave other people alone.

Actually, I agree that one should use better birth control, to make efforts to avoid needing abortion. But the same people who are against abortion are the ones that are sex education and promotion of birth control.

An Australian high court ruled Friday that a quadriplegic man has the right to refuse food and water and can be allowed to die, a rare legal finding that some see as a major victory for right-to-die campaigners.

While hailing the victory, Nitschke decried the fact that Rossiter will have to undergo a slow and painful death through starvation, rather than having a quicker and painless way to end his life. Because he cannot use his hands, Rossiter must rely on others to withhold treatment rather than being able to take his own life. Switzerland has an assisted suicide law, and Rossiter has considered going there.

“It’s a bit sad that the best that Australia can come up with,” Nitschke said, “is that we can let a person like that starve to death

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/08/14/australia.right.to.die/

He said it all. No dog would be allowed to slowly die of starvation. But for Mr. Rossiter, this is better then being forced to stay alive in his suffering. See also http://human-stupidity.com/stupid-dogma/assisted-suicide-death-dignity-right-die/right-to-die-paraphlegic-starve-to-death

It is also absurd that the guy has to painfully starve himself to death instead of being allowed to be put to sleep humanely (or should I say with dignity only allowed to animals)

A 49-YEAR-OLD quadriplegic who says his life is a “living hell” will find out whether he can starve himself to death as early as next Friday.
The Brightwater Care Group has lodged an application seeking advice on whether the nursing home should continue feeding Mr Rossiter, despite his wish to starve to death.
Mr Rossiter has described his situation in total paralysis as unbearable. He is in 24-hour care at Brightwater, in Perth’s northern suburbs.
Speaking through a tracheotomy tube, Mr Rossiter said he wasn’t afraid of dying, just the pain. Mr Rossiter yesterday told Perth Now that Australia should adopt Switzerland’s euthanasia laws and allow people freedom of choice in their right to live or die.
“I’m hoping the courts won’t force them (nursing home staff) to sustain me,” Mr Rossiter said.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25896071-2,00.html

1. Add to this the huge cost of his life, 24 hour care. This will be paid by his money, until it runs out, by insurances and by society. Can we afford this luxury?
2. Would he have the right to refuse to pay for treatment?
3. To me it is obviously a human right to end one’s life,  for a person that never will recover, never will have a dignified life, that never even would remain alive if not kept alive artificially,

It gets more problematic if

• a fairly healthy person wanted to die. Or if somewhat sick and frail people want to die because life is no more productive nor a joy.
• Or if a very sick person did not want to die, but society would have to pay huge cost to keep her or him alive. If they did not, that would be cruel? well look at all these people whose life could be improved by very expensive medical procedures, but are not because nobody wants to pay for it.

Also it is very sad that people are only allowed to be taken off life support to die a slow starving death, not a dignified pleasant death.

While the article does not give clear good answers, nevertheless it gives some funny and interesting suggestions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8019357.stm

By David Spiegelhalter
Professor of risk understanding, University of Cambridge

[...]

The threat from bacon sandwiches gave the opportunity for The Sun to produce the classic headline “Careless pork costs lives”, while the Daily Telegraph was true to form and frothed on about the nanny-state denying us our bacon birthright.

But all these health warnings tend to have little influence on behaviour, just as scientific derision for homeopathy appears to have no effect on many people’s enthusiasm.

So who is being unreasonable – the epidemiologists who give us health advice, or the public that duly ignores it?

Bacon sarnies

The curious fact is that both might be right.

[...]

‘Nudging’

These issues are tricky, and reflect a basic tension between individuals and society’s points of view.

If everyone improved their lifestyle just a bit, then the benefits to the overall health of the nation would be large but each individual would not notice the difference.

An inspired epidemiologist, Geoffrey Rose, called this the Prevention Paradox and we see it being played out again and again.

That is why it is understandable that attempts to create these shifts in behaviour by exhorting people to change tend to fail – and make them anxious and guilty.

There is a lot more to say:

• evolutionary explanations why we love sugar and fat (when our mind was formed, sugar and fat were scarce and hard to find,not available in a supermarket without limits. One had to hunt lean wild animals and collect fruits or risk one’s life to get honey away from the bees)

and psychological issues like:

• why should we believe in cold impersonal statistics? how do we know they are true? Did evolution prepare us to respect scientific research we cannot personally verify?
• do we really care about getting cancer in 35 years? We follow our instincts now and eat plenty to prepare for the day we don’t succeed to hunt down and eat another pig.
• now if we had a religion that tells us not to eat pork, that would be a different issue.  Then we would respect, and no science is needed for that. Just faith!
• of course, in evolutionary time, 100 000 years ago we probably would not live enough to get bowel cancer
• and if we did get bowel cancer, we would not slowly die in a hospital with all kind of artificial life support.  There would be no problem about “right to die” issues. Starvation, infection, or wild animals would help us to end our suffering quickly.