Financial savings for Britain's broken healthcare system could pressure more vulnerable people into choosing assisted suicide if it were to be legalised.
A government impact assessment estimated that legalising assisted suicide could save the UK £59.6 million in healthcare costs as well as further savings from reduced benefit payments.
Care Not Killing, which is campaigning against Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill, said that elderly, disabled and terminally ill people may choose assisted suicide to avoid being a burden on society and the NHS.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, pointed to the US State of Oregon, the model for the current bill in Parliament, where a study found that a majority of people choosing assisted suicide did so for fear of being a burden on their families, carers or finances.
In Canada, substantial savings were made to health budgets after introducing assisted suicide, including defunding a hospice that refused to participate, he said, while in the Netherlands, the policy has been linked to increased organ transplant availability - something that British academics have previously spoken in support of.
Dr Macdonald argued that the UK should instead focus on addressing underfunding in the palliative care system - where one in four who need it do not receive it — rather than introducing assisted suicide.
“At a time when we have seen how fragile our cash strapped health care system is, how the hospice movement has a £150 million blackhole in its budget, and when up to one in four Brits who would benefit from palliative care but aren’t currently receiving it, introducing so-called assisted dying would be an incredibly dangerous policy that would put pressure on vulnerable, elderly and disabled people to end their lives prematurely," said Dr Macdonald.
"We need to fix the UK’s broken and patchy palliative care system so everyone can have a dignified death. We need better care not killing.”
Caroline Ansell, of Christian advocacy group CARE and a former MP, said that the cost-saving potential of assisted suicide was "troubling".
"Legalising this practice would raise the spectre of patients being encouraged, directly or tacitly, to end their lives due to the prohibitive costs of care," she said. "This tragic outcome has been seen in jurisdictions such as Canada. MPs must ask whether they are prepared to open the door to it in the UK."Ms Ansell added: "We are also concerned that the impact assessment places too much emphasis on vulnerable citizens' access to assisted death, rather than safeguarding against any disproportionate impact upon this group. "People on the margins of society will be most at risk under an assisted suicide regime. We would urge parliament to reject the Assisted Dying Bill."
The government's impact assessment was published on Friday and includes the estimated number of assisted suicides per year should it be legalised.
The document estimates between 164 and 787 deaths from assisted suicide in the first year after its implementation, rising to between 1,042 and 4,559 a year in the tenth year of its operation.
