To live and die with dignity
State readies for physician-assisted suicide.
California’s new law approving physician assisted suicide, Senate Bill 128, the “End of Life Option Act” will not go into effect sometime later this month at the end of the healthcare legislative session, but the California Medical Association issued guidelines for physicians on January 19. The law would permit physicians to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients diagnosed with an incurable disease and have less than six months to live. The bill applies to California residents only.
Northern Inyo Hospital (NIH) and Mammoth Hospital are getting ready for the new laws. Gary Myers, Mammoth Hospital CEO, said in an email, “Our Medical Staff will be putting into place policy and procedure to deal with the enactment of SB 128, the End of Life Act.”
Dr. Kevin Flanigan, interim-CEO at NIH, said at the January 19 NIH Board meeting that the hospital does not yet have a policy on the law, as there are not yet rules to direct how to implement and operate the new law.
Pat West, owner and operator of Pioneer Home Healthcare and a local, licensed Hospice provider, said the laws and regulations are all very new and she’s still processing the new information.
By Oregon and Washington law all family members are not required to be contacted. A single heir is allowed to steer the sign up and then execute the lethal process without a witness, thus eviscerating intended safe guards. Everyone involved in the lethal process gets immediate immunity. A witness is not required to confirm the dose was self-administered so if they struggled and changed their mind who would ever know?
In addition these laws prohibit investigations or public inquiries leaving no recourse for surviving family members who were not contacted. Does that sound like good public policy to you? This is a very dangerous public policy that allows for the exploitation of elders and people with disabilities of all ages by predators. However, it serves the health insurance corporations very well.
Unfortunately all of these loopholes and more are embodied in California’s ABX2-15 and does not protect the public from predators and predatory corporations