In Oregon, Death is Cheaper Than Life
Patients deemed “terminally ill” by the state of Oregon are getting the sense that death is cheaper than saving their lives. Since Oregon offers a state-run health care plan, those who are terminally ill have been told that their treatments have been denied, but that they would be covered for assisted suicide.
Fox News aired a series called “America’s Future,” which is looking at the challenges we face in the 21st Century. One series featured a man from Oregon, who was denied chemotherapy treatment and was offered physician assisted suicide instead.
“Oregon doesn’t cover life-prolonging treatment unless there is better than a 5 percent chance it will help the patients live for five more years — but it covers doctor-assisted suicide, defining it as a means of providing comfort, no different from hospice care or pain medication.
“It’s chilling when you think about it,” said Dr. William Toffler, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. “It absolutely conveys to the patient that continued living isn’t worthwhile.”
According to KATU, another cancer patient from Oregon shares a similar story, as she was being denied coverage for Tarceva, a powerful chemotherapy drug. Oregon’s health care plan offered her physician assisted suicide as well.
Since Oregon’s health care plan was created 15 years ago, this was prior to the advent of new life saving medicines. Instead of prolonging the life of a terminally ill cancer patient, Oregon is now sentencing them to death by denying coverage. If President Obama’s health care plan is passed, this will be the same message that millions across the country could be hearing.
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How is the government plan denying coverage any different then a private plan doing so? The only difference I can see is that when the state denies funding it is because the funding isn't there, while when an insurance company denies funding it is to preserve their profits.
In the rest of America, when the proposed Gov't plan destroys all but the wealthiest insurance companies while forcing 44 million more people into the busting-at-the-seams healthcare market, this will no longer be news. It will be commonplace to the point that it is not news-worthy.
Won't that make the Obama-worshiping ageists smile gleefully.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
The law, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), will lower the deficit by a little under $200 billion over the next ten years AND expand good health care coverage to nearly 30 million additional Americans. The CBO also stated that the bill will cause a drop in the unemployment rate. So the bill expands coverage, lowers the deficit, and helps with unemployment, all without creating a government-run health care system. How is this a bad thing?
The consistant thing I've seen among American conservatives rambling about the health-care law is that they really don't know the first thing about it. They just keep pandering to the right-wing base and yelling how it's socialism, which it really isn't. The problem with American conservatives, particularly so-cons, is that they don't frame the debate the way it is, which is a debate between two equally valid points of view on how the government should be run. The conservatives, instead, frame the debate as a battle between good and evil, which makes a true and honest discussion of ideas between the two sides impossible.
As far as euthanasia, watch the documentary "The Suicide Tourist" on PBS and tell me why exactly you oppose euthanasia.
Nor have you.
The President didn't read it before signing it; the Senators didn't read it before voting for it. What's your point?
When drawing up the report, the CBO had to pretend that the programs created by Dept. of Health and Human Services would save money. CBO had to do this because it is assumed that those programs would save money in the law itself.
However, in the real world, government programs never save money. They are boondoggles, all.
The fact is that the last government project which was completed under budget was the Hoover Dam. Yet here you are, under the influence of hopium, telling me to buy the hype...
All the while harping on how the debate is 'framed'. It is not a "good vs. evil" argument; it is a "truth vs. Obama" argument.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.