[National Review] Legalizing euthanasia can stunt the palliative-care sector. The Netherlands, for example, has traditionally performed comparatively poorly in this field. Indeed, one doctor once infamously said he didn’t need palliative care when he had euthanasia.Now, in Quebec, the head of provincial medical association ‐ who supports euthanasia ‐ warns that some patients have been forced to "choose" to be killed because they couldn’t access quality palliative care. From the McLean’s story:
Provincial foot-dragging on plans to substantially expand palliative care services is actually denying patients the very choice that was promised in the shift to MAiD, and making it increasingly problematic to discern which patients truly wanted to have a doctor deliberately end their life, [Collège des Médicins President, Dr. Charles] Bernard says.
"In certain identified cases, patients, for the lack of (palliative) care, might have had no choice but to ask for medical assistance in dying to end their days ’in dignity,’ which deeply concerns us," the Collège president tells the minister.
Worse, he adds, the Collège has been hearing increasing concerns from its member doctors about re-direction of already scarce resources from palliative care to medical assistance in dying, which risks a violation of both the letter and the spirit of Quebec’s law governing end-of-life care.
Paint my expression as completely unsurprised. The delivery of proper palliative care requires specialized training and can be very labor intensive. The most difficult cases may demand a great deal of inadequately compensated time from the doctor. Euthanasia doesn’t require anything like that kind of expertise.