Pia Matthews, senior lecturer in health care ethics at St Mary’s University, London, told CNA on October 1 that if assisted dying is legalised in the UK this November, “there is real risk that funding to a hospice will depend on whether the hospice engages in the practice of facilitating assisted deaths, and this will put further pressure not only on staff but also on the survival of some hospices, which are already underfunded… Given that the very nature of assisted dying means that it is the cheaper option, this will inevitably have serious consequences for the funding of hospice care.”
She continued: “The argument in favor of assisted dying is that assisted dying offers choice to patients. Purely on a cost basis, choice will be taken away if hospices are not adequately funded and more people will be implicitly coerced into assisted suicide because they will feel they have no choice.”
The law on assisted suicide is expected to change in England and Wales after Member of Parliament Kim Leadbeater successfully introduced a private member’s bill in November 2024 called the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. The bill would legalise ‘assisted dying’ for terminally ill adults with less than six months to live.