IME, hospice care is free only to the extent you are covered by Medicare, Medicaid or other insurance. In other words, not available for me or the millions like me.
The proposed law described cited in the OP defined a "terminally ill" person as someone who would die within six months. Not someone who was a quadriplegic or has another chronic condition. The application for assistance would had to be made by the person in question, and would have had to be approved by two separate doctors.
I don't see what additional safeguards anyone could want - I think that, if you're against a law like this, you're against physician assisted suicide, period, full stop. That of course is your prerogative, but then we should be discussing whether physician assisted suicide is appropriate, instead of arguing implications/assumptions about provisions that weren't in or applicable to the proposed law.
Having seen a number of people I care about through their final illnesses, I am all for easing the process for the dying when they so wish. I certainly hope that I have the ability to do it for myself when the time comes.
As for finding someone dead of medication - if you think you would be traumatized by that, imagine walking in on someone who has shot themselves, hung themselves, or died in one of the other ways available to those physically able enough to carry out the act, but who don't have the option of dying much more tranquilly because of objections to medications being prescribed by a doctor.
I think that people in this society are so afraid of death that they want to be removed from it completely. It's a fact of life that cannot be avoided. I find it much, much more difficult to witness suffering than to witness a relatively peaceful death.
The proposed law described cited in the OP defined a "terminally ill" person as someone who would die within six months. Not someone who was a quadriplegic or has another chronic condition. The application for assistance would had to be made by the person in question, and would have had to be approved by two separate doctors.
I don't see what additional safeguards anyone could want - I think that, if you're against a law like this, you're against physician assisted suicide, period, full stop. That of course is your prerogative, but then we should be discussing whether physician assisted suicide is appropriate, instead of arguing implications/assumptions about provisions that weren't in or applicable to the proposed law.
Having seen a number of people I care about through their final illnesses, I am all for easing the process for the dying when they so wish. I certainly hope that I have the ability to do it for myself when the time comes.
As for finding someone dead of medication - if you think you would be traumatized by that, imagine walking in on someone who has shot themselves, hung themselves, or died in one of the other ways available to those physically able enough to carry out the act, but who don't have the option of dying much more tranquilly because of objections to medications being prescribed by a doctor.
I think that people in this society are so afraid of death that they want to be removed from it completely. It's a fact of life that cannot be avoided. I find it much, much more difficult to witness suffering than to witness a relatively peaceful death.
