May 3, 2024
Last November, Not Dead Yet (NDY) filed a Public Comment on HHS/OCR Proposed Section 504 Healthcare Regulations. This week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the finalization of the new regulation prohibiting disability discrimination in healthcare under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
While the primary focus of our public comment was the denial of life-sustaining healthcare treatment based on negative disability biases, we mentioned the issue of equality in suicide prevention as well, for example, here:
As HHS has indicated in its discussion of the proposed rule, biases about the impact disabilities have on “quality of life” are endemic among medical professionals. One manifestation of these discriminatory attitudes is the failure to treat suicidal depression in people with disabilities, including older individuals, although other people with suicide ideation are routinely offered suicide prevention services.