Economic Benefits of Euthanasia

Euthanasia is assisted suicide, it is an action taken by a doctor with consent of the patient in order to relieve immense pain and suffering. However, is the overall process of Euthanasia beneficial for the economy? Based on research, euthanasia is beneficial to the economy, and saves a vast amount of money for families for hospital stays, private insurance companies, taxpayers, and medicare each year.For a hospital stay, the average cost per inpatient day is $2,534.00 for a local or state government hospital.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Let's say there is a terminally ill patient with leukemia, the diagnosis will cost $3,167.00, treatment will cost $46,387, bone marrow will cost $6,491.00, transplantation will range from $25,531.00-$44,087.00, last but not least the follow up will cost $4,167. According to NCBI.com, after these expenses the cost amounts to $104,299.00, this is not including hospital stay. On the other hand, Euthanasia is far less expensive because the average cost of Euthanasia is $10,118.00. If one takes the average cost of hospital stay per night for four weeks, and add it to the cost of Euthanasia, the price amounts to $27,860. After the process of Euthanasia, the hospital stay is immediately ended and there are no longer materials and efforts used to keep this person alive. Dave Ramsey in one of his financial lessons about health and life insurance one said that the most expensive part of someone's life is the last 6 months. This is completely true especially when you add a sickness, or a terminal illness into the equation. If you factor in euthanasia you can cut of the last six months and save yourself a massive amount of money.

Furthermore, insurance companies save a vast amount from euthanasia due to the fact that there is no longer a need to be covering ridiculously expensive medical bills. These high priced medical bills are no longer piling up, and it is far cheaper for private insurance companies to cover the process of Euthanasia rather than the process of treatment. Coverage of Euthanasia would be well over $100,000. Where as the coverage of Euthanasia is approximately $28,000. The savings are over $72,000, and that is just for one specific case, if more people turned to Euthanasia, the savings on behalf of the private insurance companies could become millions of dollars and not just a couple thousand dollars. The money that private insurance companies save could g toward offering people lover premiums and broaden their horizons to cover more individuals and their needs. One can easily find news articles based on insurance companies pushing euthanasia. This is simply because it saves the insurance companies so much money. For example, Health insurance companies now pushing EUTHANASIA to avoid paying disease treatment coverage costs to doctors and hospitals,- (naturalnews.com). One last example, With the passage of assisted-suicide laws, there are new reports that health insurance companies are refusing to cover lifesaving medical care and are offering to pay patients to kill themselves,-(patientsrightscouncil.org).

The overall controversial side of this argument is over the morals. However, if one is able to get past that and look at the economical side of the process, it can save massive amounts of money and cut corners. In addition to helping the private insurance companies, Euthanasia saves the taxpayers a vast amount of money as well. In Canada Euthanasia saved a grand total of 140 million dollars. The study also said it could save up to 139 million a year of the taxpayers dollars. If we implement more euthanasia on practical cases where patients are suffering and willing to die, we could save the taxpayers millions of dollars (bioedge.org). Research has also shown that 41% of republicans support Physician assisted suicide because it lowers healthcare costs, which means more dollars in your pocket. A lot of citizens who go uninsured in America also need hospital procedures and have expensive medical bills. That's where the taxpayers come in. The government takes some money from the taxpayers to fund non-profit hospitals and their DHS payments used to help pay for procedures that are needed to help the patients with medicaid and the patients that go uninsured. Those medical bills add up as well, and the process of Euthanasia is still much cheaper than the average hospital bill. If non-profit hospitals implemented more Euthanasia, this could save the government and the taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money.

Taxpayers and private insurance companies are not the only ones that benefit, Medicare does as well. One out of every four Medicare dollars, more than $125 billion, is spent on services for the 5% of beneficiaries in their last year of life (Time.com). In addition, Euthanasia saves money on numerous nursing facilities, hospice, hospitals, and various medical services. Many commentators note that 27 to 30 percent of the Medicare budget is spent on the 5 percent of Medicare patients who die each year. They also note that the expenditures increase exponentially as death approaches, so that the last month of life accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the medical care expenditures in the last year of life,- (nejm.org) When the sick are on their last leg of life, and when the elderly are on theirs, that is when the medical bills and the hospital stays become the most expensive. When it comes to euthanasia we can cut a huge portion of the cost by using this practice of physician assisted suicide. This saves money for the taxpayers as well as Medicare. Based on research, euthanasia is beneficial to the economy, and saves a vast amount of money for families for hospital stays, private insurance companies, taxpayers, and medicare each year. As of Right now it is only legal in Washington D.C., Washington, California, Colorado, Oregon, vermont, and Hawaii, but if the process of Euthanasia is legalized in more states, and hopefully the whole country later down the road, the overall savings for everyone would be remarkable. This means more money in the pockets of the individuals who actually have to pay taxes, lower premiums for the insured , more coverage from private insurance companies, and so much more.

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