LETTER: Assisted suicide bill bad for Nevada

I am a senior and a suicide prevention advocate. Currently, Nevada has the highest national rate of senior suicides in the nation. One of the top reasons many seniors give for desiring assisted suicide is not untreatable pain or lack of dignity in dying, but the feeling that they are a burden.

Assembly Bill 351 which would legalize assisted suicide in Nevada, sends the message to seniors who are living with chronic conditions that they are an unnecessary burden to their families and communities.

I think it is particularly pernicious that the bill requires the cause of death be listed as the chronic condition of the patient rather than suicide. Is this a backdoor way for Nevada to artificially lower our highest-in-the-nation suicide rates?

Assisted suicide married to managed care is a particularly deadly match because the goal of managed care is to provide the lowest cost care possible for patients, and certainly the prescription of lethal drugs is cheaper than effective palliative care. There have been cases in both California and Oregon where insurance companies denied expensive but possibly lifesaving or life-extending treatments, but approved lethal prescriptions for assisted suicide.

Depression among seniors is a major risk for suicide, and this bill does not require that a person seeking assisted suicide be evaluated for treatable and manageable clinical depression.

Indeed, instead of promoting the “snake oil” of assisted suicide, Nevada would do well to increase funding for palliative and mental health care.

It is ironic that in the same legislative session in which AB351 is being advanced the life-saving Senate Bill 390 — to establish and fund the 9-8-8 statewide suicide prevention hotline — is also being advocated. The contrast between the two bills shows the moral confusion of our state lawmakers.