New Research Shows Wide Support for Patients’ End-of-Life Rights
Following up on yesterday’s post about the aid-in-dying trial recently concluded in New Mexico:
Recent headlines and stories about a poll from The Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life project missed the real news. The poll showed that a majority or “two-thirds of Americans (66 percent) say there are at least some situations in which a patient should be allowed to die” and concluded “the share [of people] saying they would stop their treatments so they could die has remained about the same over the past 23 years.”
Yet, many subsequent headlines and stories about the poll focused on a slight increase in the percentage of Americans who say that doctors should do everything possible to keep patients alive.This latter finding is not surprising given the growing chasm of access to health care between the wealthiest and poorest Americans over the last few decades. It is only natural that many Americans who are medically underserved or marginalized would want more medical care at the end of life when asked that question. In addition, health care has seemed like a luxury to millions of Americans who cannot afford it. But thanks to implementation of the Affordable Care Act starting next month, many will have access to more and better-quality health care.
Equally important is that everyone feels differently about how much medical treatment they want at the end of life based on the specific circumstances they are facing. These critical end-of-life decisions are complex and tightly connected to a variety of factors in a person’s life or situation. For example, 57 percent of those polled say they would tell their doctors to stop treatment if they had a disease with no hope of improvement and were suffering. That figure is 52 percent when the same people were asked if they would want to stop receiving treatment if they had an incurable disease and were totally dependent on someone else for their care.