Dive Brief:
- A Colorado House committee voted 8 to 5 against a bill seeking the right for terminally-ill patients to obtain medical assistance to end their lives. The decision followed an emotionally-charged legislative hearing late last week at which more than 100 people testified.
- The decision was influenced by physicians concerned that life-ending medications might be given when a patient's prognosis is incorrect, and recovery could in fact have been possible.
- Similar legislation is under consideration in other states including California and Pennsylvania. There are five states that already allow terminally-ill patients to seek prescribed medication to end their lives: Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and Vermont.
Dive Insight:
While the philosophical considerations take center stage in these debates, they also come down to logistics.
Colorado's bill resembled the one that Oregon passed and would have required patients to obtain sign-offs from two physicians. The patients would also have had to show that they were mentally competent and that they would be physically capable of administering the fatal drugs themselves.
Among the concerns that lawmakers raised were whether the bill included sufficient safeguards to prevent abuse of the bill by those other than the dying patients, and concerns about what would become of any life-ending drugs that patients decided not to use.
Another issue raised was the possibility of becoming a destination for "suicide tourism," as in the case California resident Brittany Maynard, who moved to Oregon last year to utilize that state's legislation to end her life Nov. 1 due to her terminal brain cancer.