Who decides which lives are valuable?

It seems like there's a lot of news this week regarding pro-life issues. Most of the news isn't good, because it seems clear that there is a growing number of people who believe that some humans have less value than others. This story comes from London, where a woman who is called "Britain's leading moral philosopher" has suggested that people suffering from dementia should kill themselves because they are "wasting people's lives."

Warnock's main argument is that people with dementia take up too much of the health care system's resources. If they kill themselves, it will free up resources for other, more "worthy" people to be cared for. At this point, she is only suggesting that people with dementia be allowed kill themselves for the common good. But it seems like a short step from suggesting to demanding. After that, maybe the English government will just decide to end the lives of people who refuse to do it themselves.

I mean, if a government bureaucrat isn't qualified to decide who lives and who dies, who is?

There are really 2 huge problems here. First, this woman sees some people not as people, but as burdens on the state. Therefore they need to go away, so the state can operate more effectively. The idea is that people are valuable if they add something to society, but should be discarded if they impede progress (as defined by the state).

Second, these issues will always be a problem when the state controls and pays for health care. This is the aspect of nationalized health care that people don't want to acknowledge. In a nationalized system, people will always be seen as burdens on the system. And some burdens just can't be carried indefinitely. They will need to be purged.

And who does the purging, and why, should be important questions in the US at a time when one major political party advocates a government-run health care system...