Local doctor Michael Fratkin, who began the palliative care program ResolutionCare featured in the Journal here, emailed the following response to the news that Gov. Brown had signed the bill.
Gov. Brown has signed in to law the ‘End of Life Options’ bill. That’s quite something and reflects an electrified social conversation that is transforming healthcare.
I expect that the people of California will demand the highest possible quality of care and support for people with serious illness facing the completion of their lives, as well as their families and caregivers. This means greater access to palliative care services, especially for rural Californians.
I have always felt that the only one qualified to determine their path and destiny is the person themselves. I trust people to know themselves when they are seen & heard, as well a deeply informed and empowered. As the future arrives, we will approach our own path with the sobriety and humility called for by the respect and love we feel for the people that come to us for help.
Previously:
Terminally ill patients will be able to end their lives with the help of a doctor in California next year, following Gov. Jerry Brown’s approval yesterday of a landmark right-to-die bill.
Brown, a longtime Catholic, wrote in a signing statement that he imagined himself dying and in pain.
“In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death,’’ Brown wrote. “I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn’t deny that right to others.”
The Catholic church, which operates hospitals in California including the St. Joseph Healthcare system, had been instrumental in preventing physician-assisted suicide laws in California in the past, including efforts by former North Coast Assemblywoman Patty Berg.
The Journal featured a story about the most recent efforts to pass the law, which just proved successful, earlier this year.
This article appears in Safe Harbor.
Please consider these specifics:
By Oregon and Washington law all family members are not required to be contacted. A single heir is allowed to initiate and execute the lethal process without a witness, thus eviscerating intended safe guards. Everyone involved in the lethal process gets immediate immunity. A witness is not required to confirm the dose was self-administered so if they struggled and changed their mind who would ever know?
In addition these laws prohibit investigations or public inquiries leaving no recourse for surviving family members who were not contacted. Does that sound like good public policy to you? This is a very dangerous public policy that allows for the exploitation of elders and people with disabilities of all ages. However, it serves the health insurance corporations very well.
Unfortunately all of these loopholes are embodied in California’s ABX2-15.
It will, generally, terminate life during a period of the most extreme and prolonged costs, causing hospital and physician corporations to lose millions.
Health insurance providers will have to reduce rates if they want to continue to compete within the Affordable Care Act.
Whether it’s reproductive, or life and death decisions, “family members” have no right to unwelcome interference in anyone’s life; they are, in fact, often the cause of great suffering and the reason why they were kept uninformed.
One in four Americans is a dysfunctional alcoholic, one of the underlying causes of Humboldt County’s and California’s suicide epidemics.
If abuse of the “right-to-die” laws were ever reported in Oregon, Washington, or California, the laws can be amended accordingly.