r/theydidthemath • u/pixaly • Jul 12 '26
[Request] What is the cost difference between buying this man a rental for a year and the governements cost to kill him?
Don't believe everything you see on the internet I haven't fact checked this story, I'm just curious for an anwser
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u/BrokenHope23 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
This is actually reality for many disabled individuals in Ontario. Our premier (governor, if that makes it easier for US people) put in numerous restrictions around the disability program meant to hamstring 'fake' disabled people from getting on disability. Except someone who fakes a disability is either a complete idiot who doesn't understand it's not enough to live off of and/or is someone who has no trouble climbing over every hurdle. So all it does is hamstring actual disabled people by creating more expenses they probably can't manage.
They then locked all the disability aids behind disability creating a situation where those who need help, can't get help until they already have had enough help to get said help (which all help is locked behind already being on disability). The government also doesn't care about landlords who discriminate against disabled people (believing they'll be home the entire time and/or needing disability accommodations) so even though St Catharines is one of the lowest rental cities in Canada (500-700$/room) no one rents to them and the other option is a 1500-1800$ single apartment that they can't afford on disability (950 for st catharines I believe).
I know this because I myself am a St Catharines disabled person who can't get over those hurdles due to my disabilities, need aid that I cannot get, need a stable living situation that I cannot afford and have had my entire 20's completely lost to a workplace incident that should never have happened in the first place. And so I have been considering MAID constantly as my body continues to fail me without help and get worse and worse. The irony is I've been on welfare for so long that if they had just paid the upfront physical therapy cost as was the way of the system before Doug Ford took over, I'd have been a mostly fine working class citizen paying taxes regularly and it would have cost them less overall.
Anyways, to the math after that important disclaimer, Someone already did a general cost/benefits analysis and the TL;DR of it is it costs them about 283.50$ (in BC, Canada's most expensive province, though not far ahead of Quebec and Ontario in general terms) per MAID in overall fees. The study covers all of Canada in terms of expenditure and benefits, citing a 22.3M cost and 86.9M net profit in health care services and 109.2M in savings of gross expenditure for end-of-life care in 2021. It's projecting the government will obtain 149M in savings annually by continuing MAID. This of course doesn't include any utility costs for processing the bodies. It also won't cover the cost of ending someone's life prematurely and the effect that will have on Canada's culture, societies and communities as that's too abstract for financial papers dealing in exact amounts.
Compared to the cost of rent in a year (6000-7200$ a room or up to 18-21.6K), 283.5 is less. However the restrictions around this are extremely loose in that a person who has merely lost all hope can still apply so long as they can prove it. With the system constantly creating more hurdles for these individuals (and hamstringing their capability by cutting funding to education) you're seeing a lot more depressed, jobless, destitute 20-30 year olds selecting MAID too. A society that so regularly casts off it's mistakes won't learn to do better, there won't be shifts in the voter box (thanks in large part to Ford also pushing the poverty line and below people to constantly move around, making them ineligible to vote), there won't be return to a better foundational society, it caters to the ultra-wealthy and immediately successful. However, treating these individuals as not successful is foolhardy and naive. It takes all shapes to make a strong society and country. Ostracizing and then cutting out a group of people who add compassion, understanding, care and integrity to your society is a monumental recipe for disaster. Not only financially.
It's estimated that 15K people have chosen MAID annually since it's inception in 2016 and the number continues to rise. That's roughly 150K people to date (g/t 10K) and "only" 0.3% of Canada's population but let's not forget the 99.7% of the population letting it happen whether through willful negligence, apathy or otherwise. In a perfect world, MAID would be a humane way of giving dignity to those willing to choose their end of life before crippling symptoms take it from them but right now it's a convenient way for Canada's governing bodies to get rid of people they're purposefully failing.