14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor
Ensure ACL programs do not facilitate physician-assisted suicide
Printed page 482 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“HHS ACL should survey their programs to ensure that they are supporting vulnerable persons of age or disability and are not facilitating or encouraging participation in PAS.”
What has happened
- Not started
The Administration for Community Living has not surveyed its programs for any connection to physician-assisted suicide, and no such survey, guidance or policy statement exists. ACL survived the 2025 HHS restructuring as an operating division with its own site and its own regulatory agenda, so there is no question of the ask having been overtaken by abolition. Its single active rulemaking, RIN 0985-AA19, amends the Older Americans Act regulations at 45 CFR part 1321 to revise the definition of Greatest Social Need for consistency with Executive Order 14168, with an NPRM scheduled for 12/2026 and nothing about assisted suicide. Federal Register full text since 2025-01-20 returns 0 documents for 'physician-assisted suicide' and 6 for 'assisted suicide', all of them Medicare hospice and hospital payment rules restating the long-standing statutory bar on using Medicare funds for it.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Searched: Federal Register API since 2025-01-20 - “physician-assisted suicide” (0), “assisted suicide” (6), “Administration for Community Living” (10, read by title), “Older Americans Act” (7); reginfo.gov HHS active agenda, the ACL block (one RIN); bill titles among those we keep and search, from congress.gov, for “assisted suicide” (1, a District of Columbia home-rule bill).
- acl.gov opens but has no sitemap, so its program pages can only be reached by known path.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- Administration for Community Living programs and physician-assisted suicide
- ID
- 1340