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therightfangirl.) Italicized sections are taken from an article on www.americanthinker.com.
I've always been slightly on the fence about euthanasia laws. I believe it's wrong to commit suicide, but there's a little part of me that has a hard time telling someone in constant pain with no hope of relief that they need to suffer because it will make me feel better. In all my internal debates, though, the real reason 'death with dignity' laws are BAD (and I say that now unequivocally.) didn't really enter into it. The reason they are bad is because it allows suicide to be encouraged, even suggested, by the health care industry in place of treatment that could allow patients to live longer. Patients who had no thoughts of doing themselves in, and just want to be treated.
Case in point:
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.
A similar law is now being considered in Washington, but it goes a step further. The Oregon law requires doctors to report when they've assisted a suicide. The Washington proposal actually requires them to falsely list the cause of death as the underlying disease, not the overdose of drugs that put the patient out of their supposed misery.
The Washington proposal, in a major departure from Oregon's law, adds a layer of unprecedented deception by forcing doctors to lie about the cause of death. It requires that, when a patient dies after taking the prescription for assisted suicide, the physician "shall list the underlying terminal disease as the cause of death." Washington State Medical Association president, Brian Wicks, M.D., described the requirement in a WSMA press release opposing the initiative:
Under I-1000, if a physician prescribes a lethal overdose, when that physician completes the death certificate, he or she is required - actually required - to list the underlying disease (say lung cancer) as the cause of death, even when the doctor knows full well that the patient died due to the suicidal overdose he or she prescribed. To my knowledge there's no other situation in medicine in which the death certificate is deliberately falsified - and in which this falsification is mandated by law.
Is anyone else sick to their stomach, or is it just me? Thankfully, I live in Virginia, where they can't suggest I off myself rather than go take an antacid.
therightfangirl.) Italicized sections are taken from an article on www.americanthinker.com.I've always been slightly on the fence about euthanasia laws. I believe it's wrong to commit suicide, but there's a little part of me that has a hard time telling someone in constant pain with no hope of relief that they need to suffer because it will make me feel better. In all my internal debates, though, the real reason 'death with dignity' laws are BAD (and I say that now unequivocally.) didn't really enter into it. The reason they are bad is because it allows suicide to be encouraged, even suggested, by the health care industry in place of treatment that could allow patients to live longer. Patients who had no thoughts of doing themselves in, and just want to be treated.
Case in point:
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.
A similar law is now being considered in Washington, but it goes a step further. The Oregon law requires doctors to report when they've assisted a suicide. The Washington proposal actually requires them to falsely list the cause of death as the underlying disease, not the overdose of drugs that put the patient out of their supposed misery.
The Washington proposal, in a major departure from Oregon's law, adds a layer of unprecedented deception by forcing doctors to lie about the cause of death. It requires that, when a patient dies after taking the prescription for assisted suicide, the physician "shall list the underlying terminal disease as the cause of death." Washington State Medical Association president, Brian Wicks, M.D., described the requirement in a WSMA press release opposing the initiative:
Under I-1000, if a physician prescribes a lethal overdose, when that physician completes the death certificate, he or she is required - actually required - to list the underlying disease (say lung cancer) as the cause of death, even when the doctor knows full well that the patient died due to the suicidal overdose he or she prescribed. To my knowledge there's no other situation in medicine in which the death certificate is deliberately falsified - and in which this falsification is mandated by law.
Is anyone else sick to their stomach, or is it just me? Thankfully, I live in Virginia, where they can't suggest I off myself rather than go take an antacid.
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