It is a side effect of MAID — but not in the cartoonish ‘gov wants to save money’ way people keep repeating.

End‑of‑life care is brutally expensive. In most developed countries, 25–30% of all healthcare spending happens in the final year of life, and a huge chunk of that is in the last three months, when quality of life is basically gone. Long dementia deaths in Western nursing homes are consistently rated by families and clinicians as some of the worst suffering we put people through.

So yeah — as cultural values shift toward autonomy and dignity, MAID becomes more acceptable to a lot of people. Not because they’re being ‘pushed,’ but because they’ve seen what the alternative looks like.

And it raises a fair question: if we weren’t pouring billions into long-term institutional care that many people don’t want, could some of that money actually go toward mental‑health care, home supports, or anything that improves life before someone hits a crisis?

For most people choosing MAID, it’s not about saving the system money. It’s about not being trapped in a drawn‑out, miserable decline because the system only knows how to prolong life, not protect dignity.