Overview
- Lawmakers will vote on the amended language when they return in January, and Hochul says she will sign the bill then, with the law taking effect six months later to allow rulemaking and provider training.
- New safeguards include a five‑day waiting period, a mandatory mental‑health evaluation, a recorded oral request, an in‑person physician assessment, a residency requirement, and disqualification of financially interested witnesses or interpreters.
- The agreement permits religiously affiliated home hospice providers to opt out and defines violations as professional misconduct under state education law.
- Eligibility applies to mentally competent New York residents 18 or older with a prognosis of six months or less, requiring written and recorded requests plus approvals from an attending and a consulting physician.
- Advocates celebrated the deal after a decade of campaigning, while Catholic leaders and disability‑rights groups denounced it as harmful to vulnerable people and contrary to suicide‑prevention goals.