A Good Juxtaposition of Columns

I have a column in today’s Seattle Times against assisted suicide that urges readers to consider the context in which assisted suicide would be carried out. (It is a rewritten version of a piece that first appeared a few months ago in the Orange County Register.)

I bring this up because the Times, perhaps inadvertently, juxtaposed my piece with another column about the collapse of primary care in medicine. The author, a medical professor, worries that “our health care system is unraveling,” that it is “like a house riddled with termites.” This is a good one, two punch. So often, euthanasia and assisted suicide are discussed in a vacuum, in which every patient receives optimal care, every doctor is Marcus Welby, and there is no such thing as family dysfunction, life insurance, inheritance, or other issues. Even in an ideal system, assisted suicide would be wrong. But the way things are in our country right now, it would be catastrophic for the most weak and vulnerable among us.