From the NYT: “The number of residents taking advantage of these laws in Oregon and Washington has climbed in the past two years. Still, after nearly 20 years in Oregon and eight in Washington, far fewer than 1 percent of annual deaths involve a lethal prescription. (Of those residents who do receive one, about a third do not use it.) It’s not the way most Americans choose to die, even when they have the legal option.
“Yet the end of life care most people receive needs substantial improvement. While partisans fight over aid in dying, skeptics like Dr. Rabow note, the complicated and expensive measures that could improve end-of-life care for the great majority — overhauled medical education, better staffed and operated nursing homes, increased access to hospice and palliative care — go largely unaddressed.”