End-Of-Life Care Issues Get Lawmakers’ Attention Critics See Legislation As Back-Door Authorization Of Assisted Suicide

Your mother has lung cancer and is in the final throes of death. Her morphine dosage isn’t enough to ease her terrible pain. The doctor is afraid to boost the dosage because it might kill her and make him legally liable.

This is just one of what doctors, clergy and state lawmakers delicately call “end-of-life care issues.”

The Legislature plunged into those murky waters Wednesday with the introduction of the “End-of-Life Care Act of 1998.”

The measure, introduced in both houses, among other things would:

Spell out in law the right of a terminally ill or permanently unconscious patient to choose in advance to be given enough “palliative care” to relieve suffering even at the risk of death.

Shield from legal liability a physician who prescribed the care, such as morphine, with the intent to ease pain, even if there is risk it would hasten death.

The proposal, HB2853 in the House and SB6576 in the Senate, is given virtually no chance of passage this year. But backers are pushing it “to get some discussion going on a very important and very difficult issue,” in the words of Phil Dyer, R-Issaquah, chairman of the House Heath Care Committee and sponsor of the House measure.

“I think this is another one of those issues where, really, the Legislature has to be educated, the public has to be educated, and that takes time,” said Senate Health and Longterm Care Chairman Alex Deccio, R-Yakima.

He and Dyer both plan hearings on the measures, probably early next month.

The proposal, which some contend is a disguised “physician-assisted suicide” measure, stirs the same emotions as that subject.

“Both of my parents died of cancer and it was not a pleasant situation, but these times can be quality times, too,” said House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, who takes a dim view of the legislation.

It is dangerous to give doctors the uncontested right to prescribe medication, knowing it could end a patient’s life. “Doctors are paid to make judgments,” he said. “Let them make them,” but not free of liability for bad judgment.

Ballard said he sees the measure as back-door authorization of assisted suicide.

On the other side is Rep. Eileen Cody, D-Seattle, a nurse with Group Health of Puget Sound. She said stories of families and physicians struggling over what is proper end-of-life care are common. In the end, she said, families and doctors should have the right to alleviate suffering.

“I have a story. My father had a heart attack and was dying. We tried to get them to give him morphine, but they wouldn’t because they were afraid it would kill him. He spent a miserable night and died in the morning,” she said.

Cody and other backers said the proposal is a way to quell sentiment for assisted suicide. “If people are reassured that they won’t be allowed to suffer before death, they are less likely to want assisted suicide,” she said.