Financial savings for Britain’s broken healthcare system could pressure more vulnerable people into selecting assisted suicide if it were to be legalised.
A government impact assessment estimated that legalising assisted suicide could save the UK £59.6 million in healthcare costs in addition to further savings from reduced profit payments.
Care Not Killing, which is campaigning against Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill, said that elderly, disabled and terminally unwell people may select assisted suicide to avoid being a burden on society and the NHS.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, pointed to the US State of Oregon, the model for the present bill in Parliament, where a study found that a majority of individuals selecting assisted suicide did so for fear of being a burden on their families, carers or funds.
In Canada, substantial savings were made to health budgets after introducing assisted suicide, including defunding a hospice that refused to participate, he said, while within the Netherlands, the policy has been linked to increased organ transplant availability – something that British academics have previously spoken in support of.
Dr Macdonald argued that the UK should as an alternative give attention to addressing underfunding within the palliative care system – where one in 4 who need it don’t receive it — somewhat than introducing assisted suicide.
“At a time when we now have seen how fragile our money strapped health care system is, how the hospice movement has a £150 million blackhole in its budget, and when up to at least one in 4 Brits who would profit from palliative care but aren’t currently receiving it, introducing so-called assisted dying could be an incredibly dangerous policy that may put pressure on vulnerable, elderly and disabled people to finish their lives prematurely,” said Dr Macdonald.
“We must fix the UK’s broken and patchy palliative care system so everyone can have a dignified death. We need higher care not killing.”
Caroline Ansell, of Christian advocacy group CARE and a former MP, said that the cost-saving potential of assisted suicide was “troubling”.
“Legalising this practice would raise the spectre of patients being encouraged, directly or tacitly, to finish their lives resulting from the prohibitive costs of care,” she said. “This tragic end result has been seen in jurisdictions akin to Canada. MPs must ask whether or not they are prepared to open the door to it within the UK.”Ms Ansell added: “We are also concerned that the impact assessment places an excessive amount of emphasis on vulnerable residents’ access to assisted death, somewhat than safeguarding against any disproportionate impact upon this group. “People on the margins of society can be most in danger under an assisted suicide regime. We would urge parliament to reject the Assisted Dying Bill.”
The government’s impact assessment was published on Friday and includes the estimated variety of assisted suicides per yr should or not it’s legalised.
The document estimates between 164 and 787 deaths from assisted suicide in the primary yr after its implementation, rising to between 1,042 and 4,559 a yr within the tenth yr of its operation.
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