I’ve been thinking that, with the exception of those who are paralyzed or severely physically debilitated, people who seek euthanasia are cowards. They are grossly inconsiderate and amazingly irresponsible. I mean, if you’re ready to die, then die. But do it yourself! Don’t ask someone else to kill you, and then live with it. What an awful request to make, of anyone! It’s your life – it’s your death.
However, just recently the insurance connection clicked into place: if you suicide, the company won’t pay – so it’s for the sake of your loved ones that you endure or entreat –
So all these intellectual and ethical gymnastics we’re sweating over – passive/active, terminal sedation or physician-assisted suicide, the double effect, euthanasia or eugenics – it’s all because the insurance companies won’t pay? Wouldn’t it be so much easier, and, I suspect, cheaper, to simply legislate that they must? (Especially when the suicide simply hastens – what would otherwise be a slow and painful – death?) The financial desires of a certain private sector industry should not override our freedom to die!
Well, they don’t really. We still have the legal and moral right to die. The insurance companies just override our desire to capitalize on it. Which makes me think instead that we should simply legislate against life insurance. I mean, consider: we’re putting a monetary value on an individual life.
And just a little less questionable is the expectation that one’s spouse – whether dead or alive – provide one with money. Sure, if there’s children, well, they must be taken care of; in that case, I can understand the desire to have insurance against the potential loss of income that enables such care (but then let’s call it income insurance – life is surely a little different, a little more, than income). But I’m beginning to think this whole privatized parenthood thing is not such a good idea. Perhaps we as a society should take on the responsibility for their support – right from the beginning. (But then we’d have to have the right to provide some input into that beginning in the first place…) And if there’s no children, well, GET A JOB like everyone else! (And let your husband/wife/ whatever die when and how s/he wants to.)
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Most Life Insurance carntocts have a two year “contestable” period. Any suicide during the first two year period will result in a refund of the premiums paid and no death benefit paid. After the policy has been in force for two years, a death benefit will be paid even in cases of suicide.