Business Issues with Physician Assisted Suicide

[bob]

Disclaimer: I do not want to turn this into a debate about physician assisted suicide and ethics. Please stick to the question I have.

FOF Central has a lot of people from different backgrounds, so I thought you all might be able to help me on a project I have in school. I need to find business arguments against allowing physician assisted suicide. So far, I have the following:

- Any cost savings are minimal b/c so few people choose physician assisted suicide and most do with only a few days of life left anyway, so cost savings should not be seen as a major reason to allow it (it is something like 0.07% of medical costs according to studies I have seen).

- Insurance companies / hospitals might start being a little too aggressive in pushing physician assisted suicide, and could open themselves up to lawsuits from the families of patients.

Any one got anything else? With the diverse group of people we have here, I'm hoping someone will see something at a different angle than the way I'm approaching it.

[albionmoonlight]

Just musing with some pros and cons (you've got to consider both side, I would imagine):

Any legal physican assisited suicide would almost certainly be highly regulated--possibly requiring multiple medical opinions of the diagnosis, mandated psychological counseling for the patient, etc. All of those costs would have to be born by someone.

I don't know if this is pro or con, but it if ever became a somewhat common practice, it might shift the investments that companies make into life saving procedures and chronic pain reduction.

The lawsuit idea is a good one. You could see a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for doctors. They could get sued by patients who suffer chronic pain for years and argue that the doctor negligently told them that there was a chance for treatment when instead he should have recommended suicide. On the flip side, they can get sued by famlies of suicide patients.

We already know how to kill people. Medical research on the cutting edge of saving/improving lives leads to better health care for everyone as today's cutting edge treatments become commonplace 15 years from now. I can't see how mainstreaming physican assisted suicide would spur such advances in medical research.

The politically charged nature of the medical treatment makes the funding/reimbursment of it much more dependent on variables unrelated to business/accounting. Much like federal funds for abortion, funds for physican assisted suicide might flow and dry up depending on who is in charge. It is never good business when money is directed by concerns other than business.

Now, to counter your main point: It seems that if physican assisted suicide became clearly legal, regulated, and mainstreamed, you would have more people choose it and more people choose it further out. The 0.07% savings would almost certainly increase.

Another counter: aggressive and cutting edge treatments are very very expensive. But, once they are available, insurance companies are generally forced to pay for them due to public pressure (note--I am not 100% certain how true this is). Because health care is seen by so many people as a "fundamental right," normal market forces do not operate in this area. Companies create life-saving/extending technology that the market cannot afford, but that the market ends up having to buy. Allowing physician assisted suicide might provide an option to the market that would curb some of the research into unaffordable technologies.

Final Counter: People know best what to do with their money and their body. If an elderly man wants to give his $100,000 to his grandkid to go to college instead of spend it on long-term care, shouldn't he have that right? Or, to put in another way, doesn't it make sense to give him that option? Right now, by cutting off the suicide avenue, the state dictates how his money should be spent, even though in most instances we think that people with the resources are the best judges of how to allocate those resources.

All and all, sounds like an interesting paper.

[bob]

A little background on the paper itself - my group of 10 students was split into two smaller groups, a pro side and a con side. We were asked to consider ethical, moral, legal, and business issues from the side we were assigned to. I'm handling the con business side, mostly b/c I don't trust my teammates and I think that is a harder side to approach than the ethical or legal side. Each side does our own paper, and then we have a joint presentation (they get 10 minutes for pro, we get 10 for con).

That 0.07% is based on Oregon, which allows regulated p.a.s. within 6 months of natural death.

[bob]

Oh, and thanks for your help albionmoonlight.

[Passacaglia]

Life Insurance? Most policies have clauses that suicide won't be covered for the first two years of the policy, preventing anti-selection. But term life insurance could be an issue -- if a policy covers someone until age 65, and suicide occurs right before that, should the insurer have to pay?

[SportsDino]

On the insurance issue they should not have to pay. If you want your assisted suicide to count you should have to buy a different policy (and it will likely be more expensive). Even then it will probably be saddled with numerous restrictions (verification of a terminal illness by independent medical authorities for instance).

[Celeval]

No repeat customers?