The government must in particular arbitrate on the criteria set for the use of assisted suicide, and on the status of future “living homes”, according to information from France Inter.
Emmanuel Macron must bring together the ministers involved in the drafting of the future end-of-life bill at the Élysée next week to make delicate arbitrations, France Inter learned Thursday, November 9 from consistent sources. This meeting will take place on Tuesday in the presence of Aurélien Rousseau, Minister of Health, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, Minister responsible for Health professionals in charge of the text, Aurore Bergé, Minister of Solidarity, and Sylvie Retailleau, Minister of Higher Education.
Futures “living houses”, these new medico-social establishments providing palliative care, supportive care and active assistance in dying, are among the thorny questions on which the executive is struggling to decide. This type of homes, which do not offer active assistance in dying, however, are currently managed by 1901 law associations, such as in Gardanne (Bouches-du-Rhône) or Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), but the question arises whether to allow private companies to make money from these futures “living houses”, as they do today with nursing homes. For the Minister of Solidarity Aurore Bergé, it is impossible, her entourage assures France Inter. “We cannot take this risk and we have already seen what the lucrative private sector is capable of doing”adds this same source.
A text presented to the Council of Ministers in December
The government must also arbitrate on the criteria set for the use of assisted suicide, euthanasia having already been excluded from discussions. It is, for the moment, a question of five criteria: being of age, resident in France, victim of suffering “intolerable” Or “refractory”, author of a choice, free, informed and repeated and have a vital prognosis committed in the medium term. This last criterion would thus exclude many people suffering from Charcot disease, which causes progressive paralysis.
The question of the timing of the bill also agitates the executive. The text must be presented to the Council of Ministers in December, but the President of the Republic has also committed to presenting the same month the reform project which will include abortion in the Constitution. A pillar of the majority does not want “to combine two subjects so heavy, so strong”. “There is nothing trivial about abortion, we must postpone the end of life”he says.
The debate is likely to be just as lively on the means allocated to the development of palliative care. A minister involved in the matter confides to France Inter that with “Bercy, as always, negotiations are difficult”. “We cannot offer assisted suicide without seriously developing palliative care”she insists.