Bioethicists in the United Kingdom have severely criticised a “truly sinister” government impact assessment of the nation’s assisted suicide bill for focusing on the money that might be saved from doctors helping patients to kill themselves. Source: The Catholic Herald.
The Oxford-based Anscombe Bioethics Centre, which serves the Catholic Church in the UK and Ireland, also criticised the British Government for underestimating the numbers of people who would die from assisted suicide if Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill became law.
The centre conducted an analysis of an impact statement by the Department of Health and Social Care and a second produced jointly by the department with the Ministry of Justice.
In the first of its impact assessments, the Government concluded that if assisted suicide became legal in England and Wales, more than 4500 patients each year would initially commit suicide with the assistance of medics.
Although it would cost millions of pounds to establish assisted suicide infrastructure – including the creation of a Voluntary Assisted Dying Commission – government accountants believe about £90 million ($A188,300) could be saved in the first decade, with £59.6 million ($124 million) shaved off NHS expenditure and state pension payments reduced by £18.3 million ($38 million)
But Anscombe said in its analysis that the projections were flawed because they focus almost exclusively on the example of assisted suicide in the United States and neglect New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
“On the model of these countries, the potential numbers seeking death under the bill could be far higher than is estimated.”
The “main flaw” of the impact assessments was not, however, the underestimation of numbers of deaths but the decision “to measure financial costings without measuring benefit and disbenefit”.
“The costs reductions it identifies are not because people could live without the proposed spending or could live with cheaper alternatives, but are because they are dead.”
Anscombe said the Government has set down “in black and white estimates for how much money the NHS could save, and local authorities and the exchequer could save, if only patients died earlier”, adding: “It is truly a sinister document.”
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Government criticised for rating assisted suicide law by cash saved in patient deaths (By Simon Caldwell, The Catholic Herald)
