Newspaper column: Assisted suicide bill creates perverse incentives
Sometimes good intentions can create more problems than they solve. Take Senate Bill 165 for example.
Nevada lawmakers held hearings recently on this bill that would legalize and tightly regulate physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. The bill would allow competent adults diagnosed to be within six months of death, as diagnosed by two physicians, to be prescribed medication that the patient could self-administer to “peacefully end his or her life.”The problem is that the 28-page bill goes far beyond that simple, seemingly liberating and decriminalizing notion by opening up the potential for widespread abuses and unintended consequences.