Should the medical field be prescribing lethal medication to the terminally ill – PB/TK
Marine Vet and Doctor Fight Assisted Suicide in Nevada – By Bill McMorris / June 4 2017
The former head of the Nevada State Medical Association is fighting legislation to legalize assisted suicide because it creates “perverse incentives” for insurance companies.
Dr. Brian Callister, an associate professor at the University of Nevada-Reno School of Medicine, said that he decided to speak out on the issue after reaching out to insurance companies in California and Oregon to transfer two patients to other hospitals in order to receive life-saving treatment. The episode is now the focus of a campaign ad issued by opponents of assisted suicide.
“The insurance medical directors I spoke with said they would not cover the life-saving procedure that we’d requested. But, hey, by the way, have you considered assisted suicide?” Callister says in the ad. “It’s a lot cheaper to grab a couple drugs and kill you, than it is to provide you life-sustaining therapy.”
Callister told the Washington Free Beacon that he feared those same situations could arise if Nevada passes the legislation. He also said that the medical industry has already made great strides in pain treatment and hospice care that rebut bill supporter’s argument that assisted suicide is needed to alleviate suffering.
“We have the physicians, the medicines, and the skills to keep people comfortable in palliative care and hospice,” he said in an interview. “Assisted suicide changes the way we care for patients. It creates a dangerous segue to perverse incentives for insurance companies and there’s no going back from that.”
Continue to freebeacon.com article: http://freebeacon.com/issues/marine-vet-and-doctor-fight-assisted-suicide-in-nevada/
