(a) (1) The sale, procurement, or issuance of a life, health, or annuity policy, health care service plan contract, or health benefit plan, or the rate charged for a policy or plan contract may not be conditioned upon or affected by a person making or rescinding a request for an aid-in-dying drug.

(2) Pursuant to Section 443.18, death resulting from the self-administration of an aid-in-dying drug is not suicide, and therefore health and insurance coverage shall not be exempted on that basis.

Terms Used In California Health and Safety Code 443.13

  • Aid-in-dying drug: means a drug determined and prescribed by a physician for a qualified individual, which the qualified individual may choose to self-administer to bring about their death due to a terminal disease. See California Health and Safety Code 443.1
  • Annuity: A periodic (usually annual) payment of a fixed sum of money for either the life of the recipient or for a fixed number of years. A series of payments under a contract from an insurance company, a trust company, or an individual. Annuity payments are made at regular intervals over a period of more than one full year.
  • Attending physician: means the physician who has primary responsibility for the health care of an individual and treatment of the individual's terminal disease. See California Health and Safety Code 443.1
  • Contract: A legal written agreement that becomes binding when signed.
  • Person: means any person, firm, association, organization, partnership, business trust, corporation, limited liability company, or company. See California Health and Safety Code 19
  • Qualified individual: means an adult who has the capacity to make medical decisions, is a resident of California, and has satisfied the requirements of this part in order to obtain a prescription for a drug to end their life. See California Health and Safety Code 443.1

(b) Notwithstanding any other law, a qualified individual‘s act of self-administering an aid-in-dying drug shall not have an effect upon a life, health, or annuity policy other than that of a natural death from the underlying disease.

(c) An insurance carrier shall not provide any information in communications made to an individual about the availability of an aid-in-dying drug absent a request by the individual or his or her attending physician at the behest of the individual. Any communication shall not include both the denial of treatment and information as to the availability of aid-in-dying drug coverage. For the purposes of this subdivision, “insurance carrier” means a health care service plan as defined in Section 1345 of this code or a carrier of health insurance as defined in § 106 of the Insurance Code.

(Added by Stats. 2015, 2nd Ex. Sess., Ch. 1, Sec. 1. (AB 15 2x) Effective June 9, 2016. Repealed as of January 1, 2031, pursuant to Section 443.215.)

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