Panel moving on assisted suicide funding ban
A congressional committee is moving ahead at full-steam to pass a ban on federal funding for assisted suicide. The subcommittee on health and the environment of the U.S. House of Representatives Commerce Committee held a hearing on physician assisted suicide in early March.
Many health care professionals said they would support such a bill and also challenged Congress to come up with more federal funding for a number of programs for both the terminally ill and chronically disabled.
The American Geriatrics Society asked Congress to immediately direct the Health Care Financing Administration to conduct projects on giving Medicaid presumption of eligibility for the elderly poor living alone patients who can benefit, but are not eligible for hospice care. "The care of persons at the end of their days in this country is a national disgrace," said Felicia Cohn, PhD, researcher at the Center to Improve Care of the Dying at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC.
Speaking against the ban was the director of the National Association of People with AIDS and Oregon’s Measure 16 chief petitioner Barbara Coombs Lee, MD, executive director of Compassion in Dying in Seattle. "My concern is that the prohibition of federal funds for any service related to aid-in-dying would act as a gag rule in discussions with terminally ill patients and touch on any treatment having the possible effect of hastening death," she stated.
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