Duchâtelet looks for savings in costly end-of-life care, the CD&V and Vooruit presidents respond with anger
On Play, the businessman suggested questioning treatments for very old people instead of scrapping the benefits enjoyed by professional footballers.
Entrepreneur Roland Duchâtelet argued on Thursday evening on the Play talk show De tafel van Ruben for a public debate on expensive treatments for elderly people at the end of their lives. In his view this could free up a lot of money for the budget, and ministers would never dare to raise the subject, VRT NWS reports. He said explicitly that he did not mean people should die, but argued that very old people who would rather die still receive medication and operations. According to De Rijkste Belgen, he also said euthanasia has become too much of a taboo.
Duchâtelet, who has invested heavily in Sint-Truiden and Standard in the past, was responding to the plan to scrap the social security advantages on professional footballers' wages. Les Engagés expect that to raise 70 million euros. He estimated that up to 10 billion euros could be found in care and medicines for the elderly. VRT NWS notes that his own example, 10,000 euros per person for 100,000 people, comes to 1 billion euros.
CD&V president Sammy Mahdi called the idea disgusting in an Instagram video and drew a comparison with Nazi Germany. Vooruit president Conner Rousseau accused him on Facebook of lobbying for tax breaks for footballers at the expense of care. PVDA MP Peter Mertens pointed out that Duchâtelet has a fortune of 1.5 billion dollars according to Forbes and once called a wealth tax a disaster. Duchâtelet told De Rijkste Belgen that the political reactions simply prove him right.