Compassion & Choices, a “right-to-die” advocacy organization based in Denver with more than 450,000 members nationwide, is teaming up with U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet on the so-called Independence at Home Act of 2016. Under the legislation, the federal government will provide incentive payments to healthcare providers who, over the course of a year, realize expenses that are lower than estimated targets. This could be a financial windfall to alleged medical providers who advocate the suicide of their patients.
This perverse incentive is one of the top reasons that pro-life groups opposed a similar law in California that became active on June 9 and similar legislation in Colorado that failed last year.
The problems with California’s law are numerous. Many disability rights organizations are concerned that such a law could be used to take advantage of patients through coercion. People suffering from depression in conjunction with terminal illness are especially at risk. Pharmacy groups are concerned about the ethics of individual pharmacists prescribing a lethal dose of drugs to customers. Groups evaluating the cost of healthcare are alarmed that under such laws, suicide goes to the top of the list of least costly medical “treatments.”
And the cost factor plays a big part in the Independence at Home Act of 2016. Unsurprisingly, Compassion & Choices is funded by George Soros, and is a successor organization to the infamous group the Hemlock Society.
Bennet’s unholy alliance with Soros should concern Coloradans.