The only requirement for assisted death should be wanting to die

I've always been thinking about medically-assisted dying from the point of view of not having access to it. I fear reaching the point where I can no longer have a quality of life that meets my minimum standards, but not being eligible to be put out of my misery.  I fear decades of being tube-fed against my will, or never being able to have privacy because I'm too far into my decline to be unsupervised but not permitted to die.

And I've been writing about assisted dying from this perspective. Recent attempts at assisted-dying legislation set out very specific medical prerequisites for qualifying for assisted death.  I see gaps in these criteria, so I'm trying to come up with policy ideas that would fill in the gaps while being sufficiently palatable to pass into law.

It recently came to my attention that some people think about it from the opposite perspective: they're concerned that the existence very specific medical criteria will create a situation where people who meet those criteria but want to continue living will be pressured or coerced to die.  I've noticed that, in particular, people with disabilities who have been through some shit are concerned about being seen as less worthy of living if they meet the assisted dying criteria.

As a proponent of assisted dying, this is not my intention!  My wanting death to be available to me and not wanting to have life inflicted upon me against my will doesn't mean that I don't want life to be available to others and want death to be inflicted upon others!

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to meet the needs of both sides.  One, and only one, medical prerequisite for assisted death: the patient wants to die.

If the patient wants to die, they meet the legal requirements for assisted death.  If the patient doesn't want to die, they don't meet the legal requirements for assisted death. Period.

The only problem is, I don't think they'll go for it.  Too many people are uncomfortable with the idea of death on demand that they feel it's morally imperative to put obstacles in the way. I don't like it, but right at this exact moment I think our options are assisted dying with obstacles, or no assisted dying whatsoever.

But those obstacles shouldn't be medical prerequisites for assisted death.  Instead, they should be part of the protocol that medical professionals follow.

For example, when a patient requests assisted death, protocol could dictate that medical professionals first conduct a quality of life analysis, and try to resolve the quality of life issues through less drastic means. Perhaps even a minimum amount of time would have to pass between the patient first requesting assisted death and assisted death being administered, during which time other, less drastic interventions are tried to resolve the patient's quality of life issues.  (There would have to be an exception in cases where this minimum amount of time is longer than the patient's life expectancy prognosis, or when the patient and their medical team have already tried everything.)

But ultimately, in order to meet the needs of vulnerable people who want death to be available to them and vulnerable people who don't want death inflicted upon them, the only legal requirement,  the only official medical criterion, and the sine qua non for assisted death must be wanting to die. Everything else is merely procedural.

In other words, the only requirement for whether to provide assisted dying is that the patient wants to die.  Everything else is about how.