> especially in the case of those who want to die to preserve or transfer their life-savings

I don't know about you, but I think that that is a valid reason for someone to want to control when they die.

I thought that was something that one can do by putting things in a trust? If it's not your money anymore, what prevents you from passing it on?

Trusts don't protect you and your heirs from the cost of long term care and end of life treatments. I suppose you could put all your wealth in a trust and claim poverty/declare bankruptcy, but that's a very dickish thing to do with respect to society, not to mention your caretakers, and it isn't a widely practical solution.

Personally, I am not at all worried about being forced into suicide, but I am quite worried about being forced to live in tremendous pain with a terminal disease. Same for friends and family. I understand the worries, but they seem rather unlikely compared to the common reality of long, painful deaths.

That's an insightful unintended consequence that I too can unfortunately see playing out all to often. Still, the individual would have to choose suicide, right? They may have pressure on them for the choice from vultures, but it is still their choice.

Unless I'm mistaken, I don't see the need for any protection.

Technically it is their choice. But it's easy to imagine coercion. I can only imagine the state someone is in if this is an option for them - they might not be strong enough emotionally to stand up for themselves. I have a very hard time with coming to a conclusion on this one.

> Still, the individual would have to choose suicide, right?

Patient: I'm in pain, and need painkillers.

Insurance company/state health plan: We'll pay for poison pills, but not painkillers.

Patient: …

It similar to the way the United States uses highway funds to blackmail the several states into setting a uniform national drinking age.

I can't tell if you are serious but strong opioid painkillers are inexpensive to manufacture and many have been out of patent for decades. They're significantly cheaper than e.g. the pentobarbital* that Oregon physicians prescribe for assisted dying. Despite what people on my Facebook feed say, Big Pharma isn't making big money off of any of the old standbys like morphine, oxycodone, hydromorphone, etc. The prices a patient sees are unrepresentative of the actual cost of drugs to health care providers. A few years ago a friend got a shot of hydromorphone in the ER for kidney stone pain and the line item on the bill was like $200. About 1% of that would represent the cost of replenishing the consumed Dilaudid, maybe another 2% for a disposable syringe. As for where the other 97% came from, see: many lengthy tomes about American health care.

*Pentobarbital itself is also cheap/easy to manufacture in volume and has been out of patent for a very long time, but nowadays it is a niche drug so the overhead costs are higher.

Oh sure, the painkillers themselves are cheaper, but the painkillers plus hospital care plus other medicines &c. will not be cheaper than poison (or just a heavy one-time dose of painkillers).

Exactly. coercion on the part of emotionally uninvested financial stakeholders like insurance companies is a likely end- state.

One of the "usual" ways assisted dying has been done (illegally) is opiate overdose.

the lesson there is not to get insurance.