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A bipartisan group of lawmakers is urging Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to set up new monitoring rules for hospices to root out discrimination against vulnerable populations in the provision of medically assisted suicide.
In a letter sent to Kennedy on Thursday, Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Reps. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) and Luis Correa (D-Calif.) recommended that Kennedy’s HHS establish reporting requirements in the hospice program to better monitor the provision of medically assisted suicide for discrimination against people with disabilities, older adults and other vulnerable populations.
The lawmakers said such requirements would be a step to preventing hospice patients, especially those who are more vulnerable such as having a disability or disaffected caregivers, from being coerced into a decision to end their lives.
“Every person has inherent worth and dignity, including those facing their final days,” Lankford said in a statement. “Hospice should be a place of compassion, comfort, and care, where the suffering are surrounded by loved ones and quality health care, not a place where they feel quietly pressured to end their lives through assisted suicide.”
Congress has prohibited federal funds from going to medically assisted suicide. But 13 states and the District of Columbia have legalized the practice. In the letter, the lawmakers expressed concern that the practice of medically assisted suicide raises potential for age and disability discrimination, and that it “undermines America’s national posture of suicide prevention.”
The letter is a strong statement of caution toward medically assisted suicide from the members of Congress. Among the public, Democrats generally are more likely to say medically assisted suicide is not morally wrong and Republicans are more likely to say it is, according to data from the Pew Research Center earlier this year.
Murphy, a practicing urologist, echoed that moral sentiment, saying that physicians are breaking their oath to “do no harm” when they participate in assisted suicide.
“It is a great tragedy that people feel that life offers them no recourse other than to end their lives,” Murphy said. “Rather than suicide we should invest more in palliative care and hospice which are much more acceptable forms of medical care. Sadly abuses, such as the lack of informed consent and discriminatory practices, have occurred and patients and their families have been wronged.”
During Trump’s first term, his health department issued a rule giving healthcare workers more leeway to refuse providing medically assisted suicide.
It’s not a strictly partisan issue. The Democrats, Kaine and Correa, in similar statements, both said they believe patients should have freedom to make their own choice about their end of life.
“Where patients are making these choices, they should be free of discrimination and coercion,” Kaine said. “That is why my colleagues and I are calling on HHS and CMS to exercise oversight to make sure all patients are treated with dignity, including and especially at the end of their lives.”
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