What are the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide?

IN the Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill decisions rejecting a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Supreme Court allowed each state to decide whether to legalize the intervention.1 In state legislatures rather than courtrooms, factual claims about the probable extent and implications of permitting physician-assisted suicide assume a preeminent role in the debate about legalization.2 Particularly sensitive in these discussions will be the issue of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and how the savings might influence decision making by health care institutions, physicians, families, and terminally ill patients. 3-6 Although we do not agree with each other about the ethics or optimal social policy regarding physician- assisted suicide and euthanasia, we do agree that the claims of cost savings distort the debate. Within the limits of available data, we offer an assessment of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician- assisted suicide, demonstrating that the savings can be predicted to be very small - less than 0.1 percent of both total health care spending in the United States and an individual managed-care plan's budget.