[Ed. Note: For the PRWeb version of this release in pdf format, plus links to John Kelly’s and Stephen Mendelsohn’s testimonies, go here.]
Not Dead Yet’s New England director, John Kelly, will be joining disability rights activists in Concord, New Hampshire on Tuesday, February 4, to testify against HB 1325, an assisted suicide bill. The House Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing on the bill at 1:30 PM, in Room 208 of the Legislative Office Building.
“HB 1325 is flat out dangerous to the people of New Hampshire and the region,” said Kelly. “This bill recklessly redefines thousands of people with disabilities and chronic conditions as terminal and eligible for assisted suicide.”
Section 13 of the bill defines “terminal” as an “incurable and irreversible condition,” which in a doctor’s opinion “will result in premature death.” Stephen Mendelsohn of Second Thoughts Connecticut wrote in submitted testimony that, “This bill, with its expansive eligibility targeting a wide range of people with long-term disabilities who are nowhere near death, morphs New Hampshire’s honored state motto, ‘Live Free or Die’ into an ableist obscenity: ‘Live Nondisabled or Die.'”
Advocates from the two state Second Thoughts chapters have been resisting assisted suicide initiatives throughout the region. In 2012, Second Thoughts Massachusetts helped stop a ballot question heavily favored to win, and in 2013, Connecticut Second Thoughts routed a bill out of committee.
“HB 1325 recklessly expands the definition of terminal condition to include thousands of New Hampshire residents and endangers just about anyone with a chronic condition,” said Kelly, who also directs Second Thoughts Massachusetts. “It enables a doctor to misdiagnose you as terminal, decide that your depression doesn’t impair your judgment, and give you a prescription on the same day. No suicide prevention, just suicide assistance.”
Kelly emphasized that, under current law, people have the right to refuse or stop medical treatment, including food and water. People also have the right to adequate pain relief, even to the point of sedation if necessary. “What’s clear from Oregon is that pain is not the issue – prescribing doctors report patient concerns are psychological and social factors like physical dependence on others, feeling like a burden,” Kelly said. “Those are disability issues and we have a problem with using these concerns to justify state supported suicide.”
In addition, New Hampshire disability activist Thomas “Woody” Wood will be testifying. Another Massachusetts disability advocate, Bill Allan will testify on behalf of the Disability Policy Consortium, a cross-disability group in Massachusetts that opposed assisted suicide there in 2012.
Obviously, since the term “medical futility” has not been defined In the United States under any “due process” procedure, except in Texas, the defining of the term “terminal” in a broader sense by the states on behalf of physicians and Big Insurance and Big Hospital will permit Medicare/big Insurance to continue to encourage hospitals to extrapolate DNR Code Status into the charts of the elderly and disabled without their knowledge and without their informed consent when they are designated as being “terminal” by their treating physicians and/or hospitalists.
Is there any doubt that the elderly and the chronically disabled who are to be cared for out of the People’s Medicare Purse are being targeted for budget constraints to reduce the growing costs of end-of-life care for the growing population of elderly and chronically disabled in the USA? “Hurry up and Die” is the name of the under-the-radar public policy that will save dollars for Medicare and their private partners, Big Insurance, on the backs of the elderly and the disabled.
Will Medicare/Medicaid change the way “terminal” is defined under Medicare/Medicaid administrative law to more than six months? Is the purpose of the trial planned by HHS in 2014 in which Medicare patients will have concurrent eligibility for both the Medicare Curative Entitlement and the Hospice/palliative care entitlement (in the last six months of life) to extend the period of time in which patients are deemed to be “terminal? Will palliative care at the end-of-life then extend over a year or more and will life-saving and life-extending treatments within the hospital be excluded from palliative care? Will physicians have to seek informed consent from “terminal patients” and disclose that expensive life-extending and life-saving treatments within the hospitals will not be reimbursed by Medicare and private insurance?
If informed consent for Palliative care is not mandated, , this will mean, of course, that the lives of the elderly and the disabled will be shortened for fiscal expediency without their informed consent whenever they are deemed to be terminal by a treating physician or a hospitalist?
The New Mexico judgment in favor of lethal prescriptions for the “terminally” ill and the New Hampshire proposed law sure look like bad news for the elderly and the disabled whose autonomy to choose to live or die will be removed for fiscal expediency.
Is it necessary to legalize involuntary euthanasia of the elderly and the disabled in order to save Medicare and its private for-profit partners, Big Insurance, Big Hospital, and Big Insurance?