For Immediate Release: October 26, 2014
Contact:
Anita Cameron, 720-369-6983
Dawn Russell, 303-884-1471
Disability Rights Activists Protest Compassion and Choices President Visit
Boulder, CO – Disability rights activists from Not Dead Yet and ADAPT are protesting the visit to the West Boulder Senior Center of Compassion and Choices President, Barbara Coombs Lee. Coombs Lee is in town to give a presentation called, Death with Dignity: Colorado Next? as part of a national push to legalize assisted suicide.
“The legalization of assisted suicide puts me and others with disabilities at risk”, said Anita Cameron, one of the organizers of the protest, and a member of Not Dead Yet. “Due to our flawed health care system, it costs much less to kill me than to care for me. I’m at higher risk of abuse and coercion, so my ‘right’ to die evolves into my duty to die.”
The group says that there are no real safeguards in assisted suicide laws; all a doctor must do to achieve criminal and civil immunity is to state that he or she was acting in good faith that a patient was terminally ill and voluntarily sought assisted suicide. They also say that assisted suicide laws violate the Americans with Disabilities Act because people receive or don’t receive suicide prevention based solely on the status of their health, creating a double standard.
“We are not here to disrespect anybody”, said Dawn Russell, of ADAPT. “We just want to let Compassion and Choices know that we, along with a number of national disability groups oppose legalizing assisted suicide. It doesn’t give us choices. It devalues our lives. I don’t want to be pressured into killing myself, which is what this will come down to. I want to live!”
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These protests are absolutely necessary to fight the influence of Compassion and Choices who seem always to have the means, the $$$$, to approach the state legislatures and to try to influence the public within the state to change existing law that prohibits assisted suicide and physician assisted suicide. Hard to believe all of these dollars come from individuals who are so dedicated to changing the law. Compassion and Choices DO NOT educate their membership as to the option offered by the law of the 1991 Patient Self Determination Act to shorten one’s life after a terminal prognosis and to opt to do nothing aggressive and then transition to Hospice. Compassion and Choices appears to want the law changed so that those citizens who are not terminal can also have assistance to commit suicide.
Assisted suicide is fast and cheap and easy to sell as a solution to those younger generations who are not facing death and who are attracted to the idea of being able to easily control the circumstances of their deaths. Physician assisted suicide is the fastest and cheapest form of death for the patient, the Insurer/Medicare/Medicaid and the Advantage Insurers, and for the state and federal government. Because our health care system is primarily a for-profit enterprise and the insurers and the health care providers are not primarily altruistic, legalized assisted suicide poses a real threat to the vulnerable disabled, elderly, poor, mentally ill who depend upon the safety nets of Medicare/Medicaid and existing law to protect them.
These protests are necessary to point out the original reason(s) physician assisted suicide and assisted suicide as public policy poses such a danger to the vulnerable groups in our society, the elderly, the disabled, the poor, the mentally ill, etc..
Does legalized physician assisted suicide under the ACA further promote or make easier the transition of the safety net of Medicare/Medicaid fee- for -service reimbursement to “managed care” and “managed death?” Managed care and managed death reimbursement protocols do save dollars and ensure profits for the for-profit partners of Medicare/Medicaid, the Advantage Insurers, but does this pose a further threat to the vulnerable populations in our society?.
I read that there are currently five states who have assisted suicide laws. Do these states deny curative treatments to patients under Medicaid but pay for assisted suicide, the cheapest solution? The 1997 Federal law that prohibits the use of public funds for assisted suicide, mercy killing, passive euthanasia, etc. is still the federal law and demonstrates that federal public policy favors life over death. But, isn’t Medicare being transitioned away from fee for service reimbursement to managed care and managed death reimbursement and doesn’t this pose a danger to the elderly/disabled, poor, and mentally ill who depend upon the safety nets of Medicare and Medicaid for protection?
Hippocratic Oath
I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.
I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.
But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.
I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.
In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.
All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.
If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.