“My fear with these assisted suicide laws will be that someone faced with a terminal illness and potentially huge medical bills will either out of concern for their spouse or at the urging of their spouse end their own life.”
But isnt that still the right of the person to make that choice?
NO, there is no right to euthanasia and that is all this is no matter how they label it.
That is a tough question. First, almost anyone can arrange for their own suicide if they are physically fit enough to have control over their movement. So to a certain extent, one can not keep a person from committing suicide. I have a brother-in-law and a co-worker's husband who committed suicide. I suspect that a lot of single vehicle bridge abutment accidents are suicides. Having said that, I can say from personal experience that the family of someone who obviously commits suicide is significantly harmed. While a person may do what they want to themselves, the act of suicide does harm others.
I saw my coworker have to try to pay off all kinds of ambulance and hospital bills associated with a suicide by her husband, because medical insurance doesn't cover those costs when they are self inflicted. She suffered mentally, financially, and physically because of what he did.
I saw the suffering that my wife dealt with loosing her brother and trying to deal with emotional outbursts by her parents. For years she wondered if there was something she could have done to have seen it before it happened and have done something to stop it.
Suicide has consequences beyond the individual who ends their own life. Suicide because of its consequences is illegal in most states for good reasons.
Doctor assisted suicide involves others. What about the doctor that doesn't want to do this? What about the pharmacist that doesn't want to fill the prescription (remember the Plan B debate and what our WA State Governor did in regards to the pharmacy board). What about nurses and others? Do they have a "right?" I don't think so, but....
The law may say that the suicide-requesting patient must be rational, un-coerced, and terminal --- but there are no requirements that the patient's situation must be assessed to determine whether clinical depression or family coercion or emotional manipulation might be factors in his decision. How is a doctor going to assess coercion?
And if the doctor goes ahead and prescribes the lethal overdose, there is no safeguard whatsoever that the dose will be self-administered by the patient, and not dissolved in a bowl of pudding and spooned into the patient's mouth by an impatient Heir Apparent.
The law does not protect the patient. It does protect the doctor, because the doctor is immune from prosecution if he can demonstrate that he acted in "good faith." Unless he accepted a bribe in the presence of witnesses, lack of "good faith" is practically impossible to prove.