Barbara Kay: A disabled man's fight for life in an age of MAiD
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How many disabled people choose MAiD because their will to live is sapped by the infantilizing strictures of institutional life or forced transfer to a care home far from loved ones, even though a cheaper and empowering alternative is available? It is to Foley's immense credit that he has bent his muscular will to insisting upon self-directed care, which is already a right in many western countries, such as the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Scotland.
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It almost became a right in Canada too. In 2015, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care introduced 'Patients First: A Roadmap to Strengthen Home and Community Care,' a plan which outlined the province's intent to introduce a self-directed care option to patients.
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'Putting patients first means giving clients and caregivers greater say in choosing a provider and how that provider delivers services,' read the report. 'Over the next two years, we will begin to offer a self-directed care option, in which clients and their caregivers are given funds to hire their own provider or purchase services from a provider of their choice.' Unfortunately, it never really got off the ground and was 'paused' in 2016, according to a local health network briefing obtained by Foley, which he shared with me.
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Since SDF would offer immeasurably better quality of life for Foley, free up a bed in the hospital and save LHSC a great deal of money, I'm hard-pressed to see the downside here. C.D. Howe Institute associate director of research Rosalie Wyonch provides additional support for my perspective. Patients like Foley, she told Postmedia earlier this week, 'take up more patient bed capacity than all the top 10 surgeries combined…. It's probably the single-biggest hospital capacity issue. If we were to fix it, we would essentially no longer be at risk of acute care bed shortages.'
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Euthanasia, for those who want it, is considered a human right in Canada. Self-directed care for those disabled Canadians who do not want MAiD should also be considered a human right.
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