Democrats Shouldn’t Endorse Suicide

Politico - An article by Ira Byock, emeritus professor of medicine and of community and family medicine, on the embrace of physician-assisted suicide by progressives as their political response to needless suffering of seriously ill people. Byock comments on the current state of the American hospice industry, and how two-thirds of America’s hospices now belong to for-profit companies, many traded on Wall Street. “Across the hospice industry, the average number of dying patients assigned to each nurse has risen to untenable levels,” says Byock. “An authentic, socially sound solution to this crisis is readily achievable if we can muster the will to demand it. A tectonic shift in the way healthcare is paid for—from financially rewarding quantity of services to measured quality of care delivered—has the potential to improve care for seriously ill people in transformative ways.” Read more...