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Massachusetts Court Dismisses Bulk of Lawsuit that Argues Assisted Suicide is Not Manslaughter

  Kligler, a retired internist who has terminal prostate cancer, and Steinbach, who treats terminally ill patients, are plaintiffs in the case filed in 2016 against state Attorney General Maura Healey and Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe. They sought to have Suffolk Superior Court in Boston declare that physician-assisted suicide is not manslaughter.

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Medicare Advantage Plans Offering Palliative Care Quadrupled for 2020 but Hard to Find Sufficient Number of Providers

  A rising number of Medicare Advantage plans are offering home-based palliative care as a supplemental benefit. This year, 61 plans offer a palliative care benefit compared to 15 during 2019, a new Duke University report indicates. Hospices provide about 50% of home-based palliative care in the United States according to the Center to Advance

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Palliative Care Reduces ICU Use by 10%

  A recent study published in JAMA showed that palliative care services at hospitals was associated with a 10% reduction in ICU use for patients who died during hospitalization.  The researchers noted that over half of the hospitals sampled in the study reported that they never had a palliative care program.  Ask your state legislator

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Elder Financial Exploitation

  Financial exploitation is a fast-growing form of abuse of seniors and adults with disabilities. Situations of financial exploitation commonly involve trusted persons in the life of the vulnerable adult, such as: Caretakers Family members Neighbors Friends and acquaintances Attorneys Bank employees Pastor Doctors or nurses   APS programs report that the number and complexity

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Assisted Suicide Laws May Harm People with Disabilities

Photo Credit: Not Dead Yet Massachusetts   Compassionate medical care and end of life considerations are some of the most complex and difficult issues facing families, and society in general. It is a reality that may only intensify against a backdrop of an aging population. In the United States, the number of older individuals outpaces

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Let doctors focus on healing patients, not helping them commit suicide

  Lewis Cohen argues for passage of the End of Life Option Act which has been defeated in the Maryland General Assembly for the past five years, but actually illustrates one of the many dangers of this terrible bill (“Deathly ill Marylanders should have a choice on how and when they die,”Dec. 4). Every year,

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State should not legalize physician-assisted suicide

  Legalization of physician-prescribed lethal medication for terminal patients, even on request, is bad medicine. This is eliminating the sufferer, not the suffering. It is both unnecessary and dangerous. Twenty years’ experience in Oregon shows that “Inadequate pain control or concern about it” is a distant sixth most-cited reason for patients to choose lethal medication,

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If You’re Fighting a Life-Threatening Sickness, Keep Fighting

  Doctors make educated guesses about how long a person has left to live after a terminal diagnosis, but no one should take a healthcare provider’s estimate of how many weeks or months someone has left to live as gospel truth. Patients routinely survive long after the day they’re expected to succumb to their illness.

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Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Resolution Condemning Assisted Suicide

  While impeachment divided the House of Representatives along party lines, a group of lawmakers is rallying around a bipartisan resolution condemning assisted suicide as Congress heads into winter recess. Reps. Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio) and Lou Correa (D., Calif.) introduced a resolution last week declaring that medically assisted suicide “puts everyone, including those most vulnerable, at risk of

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Refusing to Die: The Chris Dunn Story

  On July 7, 2018, Chris Dunn survived a freak diving accident that left him paralyzed, on a ventilator and mostly blind only to face an even more hellish reality: a year living in a Maine ICU fighting for his right to go to rehab and get back to living his life. Other than a

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Is Assisted Suicide a Human Right?

  The Kings County Medical Society in New York recently hosted a brunch with New York State legislators.  One of the guests was Richard Gottfried, chair of the New York State Assembly Health Committee, who is cosponsoring A2694, a bill legalizing [assisted suicide]. As a medical oncologist with 30 years’ experience treating seriously ill patients,

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State should not let doctors become suicide enablers

  Earlier this year, the American Medical Association voted to uphold its longstanding opposition to physician-assisted suicide. The AMA says assisted suicide is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” This is, in fact, the historical position of medicine going back

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Justice Minister Lametti looking to larger reforms on assisted suicide

  Justice Minister David Lametti is being asked to move quickly to respond to a court ruling that Canada’s law on doctor-assisted death is too restrictive, but he says the Liberal government is open to reforming the law in an even bigger way than the judge ordered… Trudeau also wants Lametti to work with the

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Congress should keep the ADA in mind when setting assisted suicide policy

Lawmakers like Reps. Luis Correa (D-Calif.), Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), and Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) have done the American people a great service by calling out assisted suicide for the dangerous public policy that it is. This newly introduced truly bipartisan Sense of Congress resolution shines a light on the many dangers of assisted suicide and is

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When healers become agents of death, not life

  Assisted suicide makes for bad law and bad medicine. It is dangerous public policy that negatively impacts everyone and profoundly changes medicine’s role in society. Performing assisted suicides damages the physician-patient relationship and violates our calling to heal. Many medical groups globally and in the United States reject assisted suicide. The World Medical Association

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Why the RCGP should not adopt a neutral stance on assisted suicide

  Impact on doctor/patient relationship It will surely involve major changes in the law, which could have serious consequences for the doctor/patient relationship. ‘First do no harm’, is frequently bandied about and whatever the origin, it is a maxim that means patients can hold us to the highest and most transparent of motives. Death is

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