Assisted suicide bill likely to fail

By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

A bill which would have allowed terminally ill patients to receive medication to commit suicide has stalled in the Senate and is likely to fail this session.

Senate Health and Human Services Committee Chairman David Matsuura yesterday decided to defer action on the bill indefinitely, calling it "one of the toughest measures we ever had to deal with."

Matsuura, D-2nd (S. Hilo, Puna), had attempted to bypass the controversial assisted-suicide legislation — which passed the House — and instead pass a bill he believed would help ensure that living wills and other advance directives are followed. But at a lengthy hearing Wednesday on the advance directives proposal, public discussion kept veering toward the pros and cons about assisted suicide.

Matsuura has said he did not want to even hold a hearing on the suicide bill, saying a similar law in Oregon has prompted lawsuits and other legal problems.

He said he decided to shelve the bill altogether yesterday because health care and other professionals asked him not to change current law on advance directives, which Matsuura yesterday acknowledged is "pretty comprehensive."

"We understand the problems, we empathize with the problems," he said. He also said he hopes media exposure on the bill will encourage more public discussion about advance directives. "We're hoping the publicity about this will really get people talking about it."

Matsuura's committee also passed a bill that would split the quasi-public Hawaii Health Systems Corp., which is made up of a network of 12 hospitals, into county regions. The bill is a response to legislation that would have separated Maui hospitals from the HHSC, thus keeping profits generated from Maui Memorial Medical Center — the system's only profitable hospital — in Maui.

But Matsuura said most lawmakers would not support a bill that could hurt hospitals on other islands and that he would rather split the entire system into regions. HHSC officials said the bill approved yesterday is unnecessary and would cost the state millions of dollars.