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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Since Canada legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016, as of Oct. 31, 2018, more than 6,700 Canadians have chosen medications to end their life.
Canadians who meet eligibility requirements can opt to self-administer or have a clinician administer these medications; the vast majority of people choosing MAiD have had their medications delivered by physicians or nurse practitioners. Canada is the first country to permit nurse practitioners to assess for medically assisted dying eligibility and to provide it.
The precise meaning and implications of MAiD—in particular, who can request medical assistance in dying in Canada—is still evolving through court rulings. Québec's Supreme Court recently struck down the reasonably foreseeable death requirement under the Criminal Code and the end-of-life requirement under Québec's Act Respecting End-of-Life Care.
Without the requirement of a reasonably foreseeable death, it is likely that other legal challenges will occur to extend assisted dying to other groups such as those whose sole underlying condition is severe mental illness.
Our research has explored how the nursing profession is regulating the new area of responsibility towards medically assisted dying and how nursing ethics might guide policy and practical implications of nurses' experiences.
Current legislation guards the right of health-care providers to conscientiously object to participation in MAiD. Nurses who do conscientiously object have a professional obligation to inform their employers of that objection, to report requests for MAiD, and to not abandon their clients. They also must ensure that their choices are based on "informed, reflective choice and are not based on prejudice, fear or convenience."
The nurses who surround the process of medically assisted dying are an important source of insight into the complex and nuanced conversations our society needs to have about what it is like to choose, or be involved with, this new option at the end of life, and to be involved in supporting patients and their families toward death with compassion.
Our most recent research involved interviews with 59 nurse practitioners or registered nurses across Canada who accompanied patients and families along the journey of medically assisted dying or who had chosen to conscientiously object. Nurses worked across the spectrum of care in acute, residential and home-care settings.
[...] With the changing landscape of medically assisted dying in Canada, the need for reflective conversations becomes ever more urgent. We need to better understand how medically assisted dying changes the nature of death to which we have become accustomed and how those changes impact all those involved.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @10:54PM (1 child)
It was years ago so I can't be bothered with a link, but Oregon Health Plan (before the ACA) on a few occasions told clients that OHP would not cover their cancer treatment but would cover assisted suicide. One lady was informed in the same letter that said her coverage for her round of cancer was not going to cover cancer drugs but had the assisted suicide drugs as a covered alternative. OHP was Oregon's State health plan for people making less than 40k a year.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:46PM
I originally thought I'd just say your story is improbable and needed proof. But it took less than five minutes of Googling to reveal something like what I suspected - bureaucratic foul-up and not quite on par with what you described.
The individual you most likely referred to was Barbara Wagner. The treatment request was not for frontline chemotherapy but rather a second line treatment called Tarceva which was not covered. The patient had already received front-line treatments. The letter did indeed insensitively state that "other end-of-life options" would be covered despite Tarceva not being an end-of-life treatment and despite end-of-life and palliative options not being directly coupled to restorative treatments like Tarceva. In short, a bureaucratic screwup is what it seems to me, although it could have been a response to something the patient had requested (as in the case of Stephanie Packer of California).
Despite that, all forms of coverage, everywhere, do make decisions about what treatments will and will not be covered because there are not yet resources allocated to supply the conceivably unlimited demand for care. But in this case, it's seems to be a mistake and not intentional.
At any rate, the patient was indeed supplied with Tarceva free of charge from the drug manufacturer. She died three weeks later.
Source A, which refutes several other urban myth stories about medically assisted end of life (or "death with dignity" care. [deathwithdignity.org]
Wayback machine link to original article [archive.org].
This sig for rent.