Assisted Suicide Argumentative Essay

Imagine this: you are tragically diagnosed with a chronic life-threatening illness. Your only hope to survive is through medication to treat your disorder. The medicine is pricy but you can work out the costs each month. One day, you go to fill your prescriptions and realize the cost of a $13 pill has jumped to an astounding $750. You need this patented medication to survive and to afford it you end up losing your home, filing for bankruptcy, and sleeping in your car. This story sounds fictional but it is the reality for many Americans who can no longer afford their grossly overpriced medications.

these doctors to give false prognoses, so that the family would continue to pay them,

This is true for insured, uninsured, and under-insured Americans. These problems are exacerbated by a lack of coordination of care for patients with chronic diseases. The underlying

Patients with long-term, chronic illnesses like Mr. Davis’s, care can be very costly, especially when the patient is unable to maintain routine medical care or visits and medications. Without routine medical care and maintenance medications, patients like Mr. Davis tend to have more frequent emergency room visits and hospitalizations; increasing costs for state and local government as well as tax payers. Though Mr. Davis is able to receive care during an emergency room visit, the providers are not fully aware of his health history and are only able to provide a temporary fix of his symptoms and not address his health care needs.

Thirty six states have statutes that explicitly criminalize assisted suicide: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin. Eight states criminalize it through common law: Alabama, Idaho, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Vermont, West Virginia. Three have abolished common law crimes and do not have statutes criminalizing assisted suicide: North Carolina, Utah, Wyoming. In Ohio, the state’s supreme court ruled in Oct 1996 that assisted suicide is not a crime. In Virginia, there is no real clear case law on assisted suicide, nor is there a statute criminalizing the act. However, there is a statute that imposes civil sanctions on person assisting in suicide. Oregon permits physician assisted suicide.

Terminally ill patients should be allowed to do whatever they wish, for they are going to die anyway. If they want to cut that string a little earlier than the scheduled and having to deal with that pain, then they should be allowed that medication that will end their life in a painless way. It is selfish to keep someone who is going through so much pain, that they want to die, alive and forcing them to ‘just deal with it’ as if it was nothing. As if they were not already going to die. We, the United States, ‘put down’ 2.4 million healthy cats and dogs every thirteen seconds, so if we can kill so many animals because they have no home or are overpopulated, like we are, then should we not be allowed to ‘put down’ our own life without much of a problem?

tier, they can ask the patient’s plan for an allowance for a lower co-payment. Mrs. Zwicks’s part

Oregon Death with Dignity Act to the national level will remedy the controversy of assisted

“Even this grim figure is an underestimate — now one dies every 12 minutes.”( Cacere).

According to Simon Jenkins, a writer for the British newspaper The Guardian, states that “there cannot be a human freedom so personal as ordering the circumstances of one's own death...[yet]... the near universal desire ‘to be allowed to die in my own home’ is willfully disregarded” (Jenkins 1). By allowing yourself to have life, one would assume that this gives you freedom over other aspects of your existence, including when it should end. By denying the rights to achieve liberty, achieve happiness, and define our lives, are we not denying the rights governments around the world were founded on? It is the denial of these rights that allows the mental stress felt by patients to turn into physical pain.

For those who profess to be born-again, their personal autonomy to make the right-to-die decision is surrendered to rabbi, or mullah or other religious heads claiming that the will of their Head be done over their lives (Ullmann-Margalit 69). Davila in his 2006 journal article notes that there are five predominant issues that lead people to seek futile healthcare which include psychological, legal, spiritual, social and political reasons which are vaguely founded (60).

While the basic metal tier system may cover a good portion of the general care, there is a serious gap in the coverage for medicine. 54% of the silver health plans offered have a separate drug deductibles. In addition, 72% of those plans require coinsurance after that deductible for the highest tier drugs. The price for any treatment also varies significantly by plan and by state. This presents special difficulties for cancer patients who lack the information to compare different plans. Unpredictable prices for treatment exacerbate the financial burden of trying to pay for their medicine. One of easiest ways mitigate costs for cancer patients is to amend the way in which drugs classified. Under the essential benefits provision, all health care

When a patient hears the word cancer, his or her mind often enters complete shock. Then, the questions of, “How serious? Is it treatable? What can I do? How long do I have?” emerge. Patients should not have to ask, “How much will this cost?” Instead, they should have peace of mind knowing that some of their expenses will be covered by a very basic health insurance plan; however, this is often not the case.

I do not believe that a person has to be severely ill to justify any assistance. It is

Research conducted indicates that this method of fund raising will increase the state resources by approximately 11% and as a result more low income individuals and families will have access to appropriate health services to manage their conditions (CPBB, 2015). It is proposed that the federal and state government allocate the funds obtained towards the Medicare and Medicaid programs. This will expand the services offered by these programs and with additional funds; they can provide individuals with access to specialized care and services needed to manage their condition. However, it is imperative that the federally established poverty guideline be periodically re-evaluated, to increase the percentage of individuals that are eligible for subsidized health care. The idea is to have individuals with chronic illness sign up for the packages that offer the services and care needed. With the aforementioned, proposal for increasing both the federal and states health care budget, the goal of providing all Americans with access to health care, will become realistic. The goal of the ACA is to ensure that everyone has access to healthcare, so by providing government assistance to individuals in need to manager their illness will ultimately reduce the long term health care cost. Chronically