If you know anyone who lives in the State of Washington, urge them to vote against this attempt to further devalue life.
Oregon seems to have found a surefire way to lower health care costs: Tell the patient you’ll pay for drugs that will end her life, but not those that would extend her life. Here’s how it works:
In May 2008, 64-year-old retired school bus driver Barbara Wagner received bad news from her doctor. She found out that her cancer, which had been in remission for two years, had returned. Then, she got some good news. Her doctor gave her a prescription that would likely slow the cancer’s growth and extend her life. She was relieved by the news and also by the fact that she had health care coverage through the Oregon Health Plan.
It didn’t take long for her hopes to be dashed.
Barbara Wagner was notified by letter that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn’t cover her prescription. But the letter didn’t leave it at that. It also notified her that, although it wouldn’t cover her prescription, it would cover assisted suicide.
After Wagner’s story appeared in the Eugene Register-Guard, the Oregon Health Plan acknowledged that it routinely sends similar letters to patients who have little chance of surviving more than five years, informing them that the health plan will pay for assisted suicide (euphemistically categorized as “comfort care”), but not for treatment that could help them live for months or years.
Certainly, spending $100 for deadly drugs is cost effective. And, ever since the Oregon Death with Dignity Act transformed the crime of assisted suicide into a “medical treatment” more than ten years ago, it has been perfectly legal. Oregon doctors prescribe lethal overdoses of drugs. Pharmacists dispense them, sometimes with instructions to “take all of this with a light snack and alcohol to cause death.” Patients die after taking them.
On to Seattle
Now, an Oregon-style law is under consideration in Washington State. After engineering passage of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, assisted-suicide advocacy groups thought other states would rapidly adopt similar laws. But they were wrong. Because their attempts to pass Oregon-style laws in more than twenty states failed, the Portland-based Death with Dignity National Center (DDNC), along with Compassion & Choices (the former Hemlock Society), devised a plan in 2005 called “Oregon plus One” to break the logjam. It is based on the premise that, if just one more state follows Oregon’s lead, then other states will fall in line.
The plan was put into effect in early 2006. In its 2007 annual report, the DDNC noted that it had spent a year “researching and collecting data to determine that state which is most likely to adopt a Death with Dignity law…Through these efforts we have identified Washington as the state.” (Note that the assisted-suicide group chose Washington. Washingtonians were not in on the selection.)
After choosing Washington as the target state, the DDNC reported, “[W]e have never had such great odds of success as we have in Washington in 2008. That is why we will be directing $1.5 million over the next year and a half to the efforts….Our organization is providing leadership, political strategy, and financial resources to this monumental effort.”
The political campaign was formally announced in late 2007 and, in mid-July 2008, Initiative 1000 (called the “Washington Death with Dignity Act,” a measure virtually identical to Oregon’s law) qualified for the 2008 general election ballot. Its advocates contend that Oregon’s ten-year experience demonstrates that a Death with Dignity law not only works well, but is actually a benefit to patients. As proof they point to Oregon’s annual official reports, to the law’s “safeguards,” and to studies in professional journals.
However, their claims are at best misleading. For example, under Oregon’s law doctors participating in assisted suicide must file reports with the state. So the only physicians providing data for official annual reports are those who actually prescribe lethal drugs for patients. First, they help the person commit suicide and, afterwards, they report whether their actions complied with the law. Then, that information is used to formulate the state’s official annual reports. However, according to American Medical News, Oregon officials in charge of issuing the reports have conceded that “there’s no way to know if additional deaths went unreported.” (The official number of reported assisted-suicide deaths in Oregon is 341.)
11 Comments •
Who said that the work of the Thire Reich was ended. The good work of Mengela and others lives on in the progressive agenda. First the old and infirmed then the premature and disabled, next those of any age with permanent disabilities will be put out of their “Pain”. Finaly medical cost will go to Zero as anyone with any intelligence will avoid a doctor at all costs.
What a wonderfull country we will then have only the perfect will live. Wait wasn’t that the Goal of the Master Race?
Lord have Mercy, Christ Have Mercy, Lord have Mercy
For I am a Sinner, thank God I am not of the Master Race