Michigan Disability Resistance

American life expectancy at birth declined for the second consecutive year in 2016, fueled by a staggering 21 percent rise in the death rate from drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The United States has not seen two years of declining life expectancy since 1962 and 1963, when influenza caused an inordinate number of deaths. In 1993, there was a one-year drop during the worst of the AIDS epidemic.

“I think we should take it very seriously,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the CDC. “If you look at the other developed countries in the world, they’re not seeing this kind of thing. Life expectancy is going up.”

Despite not hearing about it often, assisted suicide is a major issue in the U.S. right now. In more than 20 states this year alone lawmakers have introduced bills to legalize assisted suicide, and almost every single one of them has been struck down — with bi-partisan support. A recent bi-partisan Sense of Congress bill introduced in Washington, D.C., has opened up the discussion at a national level, and paved the way for upcoming bills and debates in 2018. If 2017 was a busy year for assisted suicide legislation, 2018 will be even more so.

Though assisted suicide is promoted as freedom of choice, the economic forces that drive insurance companies, and subsequently patients’ coverage options, greatly restrict self-determination for already vulnerable populations, including people with disabilities. There is evidence that economic considerations limit choice when it comes to health insurance coverage. And the deadly combination of assisted suicide and our profit-driven health care system does in fact steer some patients toward lethal drugs, the cheapest form of “treatment.”

Dr. Brian Callister, a physician from Reno, Nev., was told by two separate insurance medical directors that assisted suicide would be covered for his California patients, but the curative therapies Dr. Callister had prescribed to save their lives would not.

Callister confirms the concerns of health care advocates, saying that “since assisted suicide became legal in California and Oregon, the practice of medicine across the West has been irreparably harmed for patients who still want their diseases treated but are now simply offered the cheaper option of a quick death.” Patients Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup in Oregon had similar experiences.

Multiple studies show that people with disabilities, senior citizens, poor people, and people of color are more likely to be mistreated by medical professionals, and the likelihood of being mistreated increases if family members view them as an emotional or financial burden.

When it comes to assisted suicide, we see in states like Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal for two decades, the percentage of Oregon deaths attributed to a patient’s reluctance to “burden” their families rose from 13 percent in 1998 to 40 percent in 2014.

This reveals that the right to die “option” for some vulnerable populations has quickly become more like a duty to die.

But there is more cause for alarm. In states where assisted suicide is legal, nothing prevents a relative who stands to benefit from the patient’s death from steering that person towards suicide, witnessing the request, picking up the lethal dose, or even administering the drug. The same goes for abusive caregivers. No witnesses are required when the lethal drugs are administered, and despite assurances by assisted suicide proponents, there are no checks or balances that would prevent abuses.

Few prescription drugs were as popular as the antipsychotic Seroquel. Psychiatrists trusted it, nursing homes used it and addiction specialists prescribed it. Annual sales exceeded $3 billion.

But in the winter of 2009, one of the top pharmaceutical sales representatives selling it, Allison Zayas, began to have her doubts.

According to Zayas, one of her best clients, a doctor at a New York City outpatient clinic, told her that a patient had died while taking the drug and that the combination of Seroquel and methadone might have played a role.

Soon after, Zayas recalled, two other doctors told her as many as 10 patients at New York methadone clinics had died taking Seroquel and methadone together. Zayas said she reported the deaths to her company, drugmaker AstraZeneca, but that it continued to aggressively market the blockbuster drug, even to methadone clinics.

"Their goal was to get in there and sell Seroquel," she told the Tribune in an interview. "It was not, 'Let's draw back. Let's take a look at the information.' It was, 'Get in there and sell.' Everything is sell, sell, sell."

Alarmed at the inaction, Zayas quit AstraZeneca and filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the firm, alleging it concealed the true cardiac risks of Seroquel when taken with certain other medications.

The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in any official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

The new “Phase Two” requirements include, among other things:

• Care Planning: A nursing facility must prepare a “baseline” care plan within 48 hours of a resident’s admission.  42 C.F.R. § 483.21(a).
   
• Involuntary Discharge: If a facility attempts to discharge a resident based on a supposed inability to meet the resident’s needs, the facility must document the need that supposedly cannot be met, the facility’s attempts to meet that need, and services available at the receiving facility to meet the need.  42 C.F.R. § 483.15(c)(2)(i)(B).
   
• Psychotropic Medication: Psychotropic medication should be used only to treat a specific, identified condition, and facilities should attempt dose reductions and behavioral interventions to reduce or discontinue use of the medication.  42 C.F.R. § 483.45(e).
   
• Dentures: The facility must pay for replacement dentures when loss or damage of dentures was the facility’s fault.  42 C.F.R. § 483.55(a)(3).
   
• Crime Reporting: The facility must ensure that any reasonable suspicion of a crime against a resident is reported to the survey agency and local law enforcement.  42 C.F.R. § 483.12(b)(5).