A fair amount of news this week. Most of it is good news. And none of it’s really bad.
First – the good. Not one, but three assisted suicide measures were voted down in New Hampshire! (You can read about specifics regarding the main bill – HB 1325 – here.)
Here is info on 2 of the 3 bills – kind of “back door” assisted suicide bills – from the March 6 edition of the New Hampshire Union Leader:
The House Wednesday killed legislation that would have lessened the criminal responsibility of the who help terminally ill people commit suicide.
Current law makes it a crime for someone to aids or “solicits” another to commit suicide.
House Bill 1216 would have eliminated reference to solicitation, but the House killed it on an overwhelming vote of 259-45.
More here on the second “back door” bill:
Also, the House killed House Bill 1292, which would have created an “affirmative defense” for a person charged with “causing” or “aiding” the suicide of another person who has a life expectancy of two years or less as certified by a physician, provided the person who aides the suicide “did so to alleviate the terminally ill person’s pain and suffering.”‘
I wonder if there’s a tie-in with the Final Exit Network here somehow, especially regarding the first of the two bills. Certainly, these two bills together would have given the underground group of assisted suicide vigilantes virtual freedom and immunity from their activities – supporting and facilitating the suicides of old, ill and disabled people.
And here’s an excerpt from the Union Leader on March 6 published about 8:30 pm.:
The House Thursday soundly rejected legislation that would have allowed a terminally ill patient to seek a lethal prescription from cooperating physicians.
Under House Bill 1325, the “Death with Dignity Act,” the patient must have received a prognosis of six months or less to live by two physicians. The vote against the bill was 219-66.
But the House approved establishing a new seven-member committee to study “end-of-life” decisions and the state’s medical directive law. The vote to pass House Bill 1226 was 162-126.The “end-of-life” committee would also investigate “the positive and negative effects of legislation in states that have enacted aid-in-dying laws,” and “how to encourage careful and responsible deliberation about this complex and emotional issue.”
I’ll try to find out more later, but it sounds like the bill was amended to strike the earlier and expansive eligibility criteria for criteria that really are more in line with the Oregon law.
News from Quebec is that opponents of Bill 52 now have more time to organize against the expansive bill that would legalize both assisted suicide and euthanasia if passed. Amy Hasbrouck gives a short summary of issues with Bill 52 here:
Bill 52 was filed on June 12 of 2013 and would allow passive euthanasia (“continuous palliative sedation”) and active euthanasia (“medical aid in dying”) for Québec residents who have incurable illnesses and physical or psychological suffering. An amendment to the bill requires that the person be at the “end of life,” though the term is undefined.
“When such ‘benefits’ are only available to a particular group, what does that say about the value that society puts on our lives if we are old, ill or disabled?” she asks.
Hasbrouck notes that, though more than 90% of suicide attempts fail, bill 52 would guarantee such wishes of ill and disabled people would result in death. “What about the right to cry for help?” she said.
The vote has been delayed until sometime after April 7. I understand Canadian politics and parliamentary procedure even less than I understand US politics, but there will be a call for an election and there will be no vote on Bill 52 until after that election. That doesn’t mean anyone can rest, though- the other side probably has the votes they need. We just have time to – maybe – turn things around.
Many thanks to all the various activists and advocates across a broad coalition that have been fighting legislation in Quebec and New Hampshire – and all the other fronts that keep us all very busy.
Good news from New Hampshire and Canada for “right to live” advocates who are opposed to state laws that would encourage and enable fiscal expediency and quality-of-life decisions to be more easily unilaterally imposed by CMS/private insurance and Hospitals on elderly/disabled Medicare/Medicaid patients.
Hopefully, in the coming months when right-to-live advocates will be meeting together to determine future actions to protect the right to live and the right to receive life-saving and life-extending treatments in our public hospitals, the matter of the epidemic of unilateral covert and overt(default) DNR Code status in the hospital charts of the elderly/disabled on Medicare/Medicaid will be discussed, protested, and stopped .
An Executive Order mandating that physicians SEEK informed consent in both the outpatient and the inpatient setting for one or the other of the two legal standards of care now reimbursed under Medicare Law would make the unilateral DNR ( the covert involuntary euthanasia of the elderly/disabled) unnecessary. .
While a few of the states have passed new laws within the past few years that clarify the provisions of the 1991 PSDA and give some protection to their elderly/disabled citizens who are on Medicare/Medicaid Insurance and private GAP and Advantage policies, the great majority of states have done nothing —-and the federal government and the Congress must know that this is a problem but does nothing because of the political consequences. .
It appears that the matter of the unilateral DNR has been problematic for many years as per the Article, entitled “Pulling the Plug on DNR” recently written by Dr. Muriel Gillick of the Hastings Center in the “Over 65 Blog.”
In researching the law, we have to come to the conclusion that there is a purposeful lack of actual case law in the courts governing unilateral DNR status because the unilateral DNR in the hospital is most often treated as merely an “ethics lapse” that is looked at by the Hospital Ethics Committee who excuses the lapse. The HECs have a serious conflict of interest because of the lack of reimbursement for adverse events that are most often suffered by the elderly/disabled Medicare/Medicaid population.
Is there any doubt that the elderly/disabled on Medicare/Medicaid are targeted for end-of-life savings that are realized when these elderly disabled Medicare/Medicaid patients are kept out of expensive ICU and CCU care by means of unilateral DNRs that permit the hospitals to limit or withhold life-saving and life-extending treatments that they KNOW will not be reimbursed under existing CMS and private insurance protocols? Is there any doubt that the goal of the 1991 PSDA, i.e. to prevent elderly/disabled Medicare patients from dying in expensive ICU and CCU Care was undermined by the lack of cooperation of the for-profit specialist physicians who could over treat at great profit the Medicare/Medicaid population with impunity under existing laws?
This disparate discrimination is ignored by the Executive, The Congress, and the states and it appears that hospitals take a “calculated” risk when they admit elderly/disabled/frail patients to the hospital through their Emergency rooms or even in direct admissions where the emergency provisions regarding “charity” patients can be ignored —or can they?
Does current Medicare law and federal and state law condone the hastening of death of the elderly/disabled on Medicare/Medicaid with the use of unilateral DNR Code Status in the hospital chart to serve the fiscal expediency of CMS and private insurance and the Hospitals who benefit from selling Medicare insurance and from treating Medicare/Medicaid patients? .
Nice comment, Carol.