Medically assisted death bill heads to Nevada Senate vote

CARSON CITY — A bill to allow terminally ill patients to end their lives with prescription medicine is headed to a vote in the state Senate, after a committee approved the legislation on Tuesday.

The Senate Health and Human Services Committee approved the bill on a vote of 3-2, with Republican Senators Robin Titus, R-Wellington, and Jeff Stone, R-Henderson, voting against the amended bill’s passage. Titus is a physician.

Senate Bill 239, which was first heard on March 15, would allow patient at least 18 years old with less than six months to live to be provided lethal drugs from a medical practitioner.

The bill was amended during the meeting to include provisions allowing, but not requiring, a coroner to investigate these deaths, excluding physician assistants from the list of medical professionals able to prescribe the lethal drugs and clarifing that deaths under this law cannot be classified as suicides on death certificates, which instead must list the underlying terminal condition as the cause of death.

But the amendment did not erase concerns for Titus and Stone, who questioned whether there were enough protections in place to shield those patients with diminished capacity who are manipulated by their families into choosing to end their own lives.

This is the fifth time the bill has been introduced in the Legislature. The March 15 hearing drew hours of emotional testimony on both sides, with those in favor arguing to relieve the suffering of loved ones ravaged by terminal illness. Those opposed argued that physicians can’t reliably predict how long a patient has to live and that the bill would lead to euthanasia in the state.

Contact Taylor R. Avery at TAvery@reviewjournal.com. Follow @travery98 on Twitter.