When Assisted Suicide Becomes Coercive

Recently, an elderly Vermont woman found herself repeatedly pressured to commit assisted suicide. Her grave ailment? Only a broken wrist. Nevertheless, staff at her rehab center “repeatedly asked the elderly woman if she was in pain or depressed; then they would remind her that she could commit doctor-prescribed suicide under the new law.”
Advocates of assisted suicide have blown off claims that these laws could lead to this sort of pressure to die. But in the face of high end-of-life costs, Guy Page of the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare said, “It doesn’t take a health care economist to see the shortest distance in finding ways to reduce health care costs is physician-assisted suicide.” This means that in some circumstances, the main factor in “choosing” to die could very well be more related to money than patient condition.  MORE