Terry Schiavo and the Oscars

Betweeen the Terry Schiavo case, the Oscar Awards, a replay of the Bill Maher show I watched last night, and Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby", I began to rethink my opinion on euthanasia and the whole issue about the right to die.

On his show, Bill Maher brought up the film "Whose Life is it Anyway?", suggesting that a person's life and the decision to end it is his, and his alone. While I agree that a person should always retain the right to conduct his life according to his own desires so long as he does not harm another person, the case of Terry Schiavo is different because somebody else is making the decision for her.

While Tucker Carlson conceded that the police do not arrest people who take their own life, he added that studies of countries which have legalized euthanasia show a trend of pressure being put on family and relatives of the elderly, infirmed or retarded people to end their lives. I don't want to live in a society where elderly people are seen as a burden on society and that they should be sacrificed to make room for the youth.

On the other hand, it is a fact that the hospital bed being occupied by Terry Schiavo could be used by other people, and that at some point, health care and hospitals do have to play the numbers game, both in terms of the numbers of beds and doctors available, but also who is paying the bills for the patients.

I believe that so long as Mrs. Schiavo and her family can pay her bills, she should be permitted to stay in the hospital and receive care. However, if and when tax dollars are being used to pay for patient care (ignoring my belief that using tax dollars in such a manner amounts to theft), responsible people such as hospital administrators and legislators must carefully and objectively weigh the cost/benefit equation when deciding who receives taxpayer funded care and who must be denied coverage.

Again setting aside my objection to taxpayer funded health care, should the case be that the State of Florida is paying for Mrs. Schiavo's care, I believe the difficult decision must be made that by keeping her alive many more people are being denied care and therefore the prevailing consideration must be to the many and not to the individual.

Sadly, the ideologically driven political right seems to blindly support Mrs. Schiavo's right to life without considering the opportunity costs of denying medical care to possibly dozens or hundreds of other people. Of course, these same people want to expand the right to life to mean the right to taxpayer funded health care, more evidence of the growth of "big government conservatism".