It can be #EconomicCoercion - normalising the idea that sick/ older/ disabled people are nothing but an impediment to economic growth (a view voiced in the UK Covid Inquiry); that the value of human lives is solely measured by how much profit powerful people can extract from them It can be #MedicalCoercion: the progressive destruction of our NHS so what you get depends on ability to pay, not need; by epic long-term underfunding; by making healthcare settings unsafe; dumbing down expertise with Physician Associates & neutralising regulators. It’s about destroying trust in medics (see CV & Long Covid groups surveys) while giving even more power to them. The issuing of DNARs we saw in the early days of the pandemic, defining clinical need by budgetary restrictions & often ill-informed judgements on quality of life. All underpinned by #PoliticalCoercion (or that of multinational masters/ oligarchal overlords?): leaving sick/older/disabled people in deprivation without #AssistanceToLive; bullying sick/ disabled people to work on the fictional basis that if they made more effort they could. Only yesterday our Government threatened that if disabled people & people with a health condition don’t want to be written off they would be offered a ’pathway to work’. No pathway can lead to work people too sick or disabled to work. And no! They don’t want to be ‘written off’. Coercion can be generated by withdrawing support to live a good life. This is #ConstructedCoercion: political choice to generate conditions that render lives intolerable, removing all possibilities of choice to live well &dignity in life, & offer it only in choice to end it.
Photo 3/6 #EconomicCoercion #MedicalCoercion #PoliticalCoercion #AssistanceToLive #ConstructedCoercion #AssistedDying
