Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Not scare tactics.  You nailed it in this paragraph: “Arguably, this provision could undermine the exemption provided by 7198 (d). Suppose a Catholic nursing home or hospice adopted an institutional policy against providing assisted suicide. An employee of that nursing home violated the policy and assisted in a patient’s suicide. On its face, subsection (b) appears to prohibit the nursing home from imposing any penalty on such an employee. As such, the exemption provided by subsection (d) is rendered nugatory.” Add in the explicit section which only permits acute care hospitals to direct that no assisted suicides happen in their facilities, and my interperetation is clearly correct.

This is how it would be: A nursing home and personnel could not be forced to do the deed or participate. But, at the same time, they could not prevent the deed from being done on site.  Hence, they could be forced to permit assisted suicide on premeses.

Add in the strict construction clause and the deal is sealed.  Moreover, under your view, the permission for acute care hospitals to opt out becomes superfluous.  By identifying one category of health care provider that can refuse consent for assisted suicides on premises and excluding all others, it means--based on the section you quoted--faclities that opposed the act would be powerless to prevent it in their faclities.

Two additional points:
- The various provisions relating to health insurance could require Catholic institutions to pay for suicides.
- As written, the wide provision of 7918 (b) could arguably be significantly more constraining on Catholic health providers than the example provided: for example, if someone had participated in providing suicide, Catholic health providers could not refuse to offer employment to them on those grounds, nor at any point refuse admitting privileges to such a physician, nor could Catholic health associations refuse membership to such people.

Did I miss something or is there no place either in the physician interviews or in the statement a “dying” patient signs that confirms either experiencing “unbearable suffering” or to being coerced? Granted, suffering is somewhat subjective but it is never personal - that in itself would be inhumane. “Unbearable suffering” is the stated motivation for the existence of the bill (Digest paragraph 3; sec. 7195.1j) but is not required to be documented.
Coercion is not safeguarded because there is no requirement that the patient be queried nor documentation of such query. 7195.1h Informed decision refers to “an appreciation of the relevant facts” which is quite vague and again says nothing about unbearable suffering. Relevant facts could include financial issues which are medically irrelevant and could lead a patient to be silently coerced.
The form that is to be signed by the patient refers to neither of these critical issues, nor is there an “opt-out” that says “You can say no to this”. People with poor language skills understand that even if they don’t know the word “coerce”. Research shows that the elderly pretty much do whatever the Dr. tells them; this bill gives physicians power to legally effect death with huge implications for abuse by any number of people who have access to vulnerable patients.

Hi! I thought you and your readers might be interested in some post-Easter news about Pope Benedict XVI…
The Pope’s car is being auctioned off to raise money for Habitat for Humanity:
http://www.buyacarvideos.com/popecar.htm
The bidding is already more than $200,000! Personally, I think this is a really fun and creative way to raise
money. The auction goes until April 14th if you and your readers want to check it out.