Oregon Offers Terminal Patients Doctor-Assisted Suicide Instead of Medical Care

Oregon Offers Terminal Patients Doctor-Assisted Suicide Instead of Medical Care

www.foxnews.com

PORTLAND, Ore. — Some terminally ill patients in Oregon who turned to their state for health care were denied treatment and offered doctor-assisted suicide instead, a proposal some experts have called a "chilling" corruption of medical ethics.

Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon's state-run health plan for help.

Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, responded to St

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And so it begins. Treatment vs. Euthanasia
The underwriters of the State health care have decided it's more cost effective to encourage the patient to kill himself rather than pay for treatment.

This is a Pandora's box of evil being opened.

What ever happened to the Hypocratic Oath? The Insurance companies have deemed it null and void.

I am for patients seeking solace from pain with assisted suicide but this is evil.

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(visit the link for the full news article)

Assisted Suicide should never be offered in leu of treatment.

I am all for it if a patient is seeking it, but to suggest it as a medical alternative is disgusting.

This was always the end result of this euthanasia push. As long as it's cheaper to just kill a person the state will always choose that over care.

Like it's hard to kill yourself? Roll your chair into traffic, fall out of a window, sit in the garage with the car running, take a bath with a toaster, blow your head off, wrap your belt around your neck, etc...

There are a million ways to just die on your own terms. Making your death a treatment option is a very bad idea. The euthanasia lobby is just trying to make eugenics an acceptable way of life.

It's easy to cut costs when you can just wipe out a generation that doesnt pay into the system and disabled children who would eventually be a strain on the system.

Why one of the richest countries in the world doesn't have subsidized heath care is beyond me. Truly outrageous.

Notice that the patient in the report is uninsured?

He can't pay for treatment, so it may be his only option, as he sees it.

I can't believe this, I'd much rather see the states offer any kind of drug therapy to treat the pain of terminal illness rather than the option of suicide.

My father died from terminal lung cancer, and his death would have been slow and painful, however in his case he was given a drip of morphine which he had some control over to the end, as well as other drugs. He was comfortable to the end, never complained and it was a peaceful death.

I wonder now, if they had the option of suicide when he was in the depths of depression over his condition and the pain he had gone through if he would have taken that option, He may have, and that would have been a shame, it may sound selfish but we wanted him around for as long as he could be.. The whole family.

reply to post by whaaa


This is really abhorrent.

I am all for assisted suicide, and I fully believe that people should be able to decide for themselves or allow a loved one to the legal right to make the decision for them should they become incapable of doing so themselves.

But the suggestion that a person should be forced to choose due to financial restrictions is absolutely disgusting.

I'm honestly stunned that anyone could get away with making such a statement.

I find this chilling.
Here in the UK hospitals are sometimes forced by the drug governing body NICE to refuse new drugs or those which only give a year or so longer life.
Refused Chemo, drug treatment or pallative care... never.
The NHS leaves a lot to be desired but nobody is turned away or denied the best treatment on offer.
Many people with terminal cancer given treatment can continue to work will paraplegics be next on the list when the dollars are added up.
This is very different than a requested aided suicide, reminds me of Soylent Green's 'going home'

I used to live in Portland and Monmouth and Bend. It is a great state. It is also the home of Lon Mabon...the living psycho.

We give our animals the respect, why not our loved human counterparts? I think this is a great decision.

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 27-5-2009 by pluckynoonez]

Originally posted by whaaa

What ever happened to the Hypocratic Oath? The Insurance companies have deemed it null and void.

No they didn't. Insurance companies just aren't bound by the Hypocratic Oath like doctors are. The insurance company is offering another, lower-cost alternative, which happens to be a sickening alternative in my opinion. Whomever authorized this decision to offer euthanasia as an alternative "treatment" should be fired.

But also! If doctors really abided by the Hypocratic Oath they could offer to treat people who were offered this "euthanasia option" by their insurance company at a reduced rate so the insurance company would approve the patient's treatment.

I would never suggest it as an alternative to actually treating a person, if there was hope of recovery.

However I think it's everyone's right to decide whether they want to live in pain or die in piece. As long as the two people involved consent to what is about to happen, I see no reason why it should not take place.

It's not a good thing when we are co-hersing our sick into doing such things. You can't volun-tell people to die. But if it's their wish, and comes from the patient not the doctor, it's not un-ethical.

~Keeper

Originally posted by pluckynoonez
I used to live in Portland and Monmouth and Bend. It is a great state. It is also the home of Lon Mabon...the living psycho.

We give our animals the respect, why not our loved human counterparts? I think this is a great decision.

Plucky how would you like it if your mom had bunions needing treatment and couldn't afford insurance, and the doctor said, "sorry, can't treat you, but I can kill you instead"? Can you see how someone in this situation, feeling helpless, hopeless and unwanted, might feel obligated to accept death?

What will it be next? Sending disabled kids to "camps" in a Nazi style euthanasia bus?

This is not about a dignified end for people already dying painfully.
This is killing basically healthy people to save the state the cost of their medical bills.

Have any of you ever seen someone die from terminal cancer, well I have and it aint pretty.

An ex girlfriends sister died from an extremely aggresive pancreatic cancer. There was no hope of any kind of treatment or remission.
Luckily she only suffered for a couple of weeks before she died, but suffer she did. There was no amount of morphine or heroin( the doctors last resort to minimize the pain) that could relieve her pain. It just killed me to see her suffer like that.
Three months from diagnosis to death, it was a terrible thing.

If I were in her shoes I would have taken myself out, not only to avoid the suffering but to free up resources that could be used to save someone who has a chance of survival.

I think that you are all missing the point that it is the STATE run health plan that is telling him this. If he had regular insurance like Aetna or Cigna this would not be happening. Yet everyone wants to encourage socialized medicine. More of this will be going on if you let the government run the healthcare industry.

You know, whats to say?

On the one hand they were looking for a kid for chemo treatment and made a huge fuss, on the other hand, they want us dead regardless of age or ailment.

I really dont have a comment, i just have nothing in me left to make an argument about.

We are ###. Its very obvious. :shk:

First, I don't think that the State is obligated to pay medical expenses for the uninsured, especially when the costs will be very high and the survivability very low.

There is only so much money that the state has available for medical treatment for the uninsured. I think that it should be prioritized to provide the maximum good. Unfortunately when you get someone like the person in the article, they probably will not be included.

Third, I do believe that people should have the choice to commit assisted suicide under circumstance where the person is close to the end of their life and will not survive.

I also think that pain medication should be available for people in a terminal situation.

I do think that this was a rather tactless letter.

He is really caught between a rock and a hard place.

I feel for him.

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.

So basically Oregon will NOT pay for useless treatments. The state WILL pay for hospice and pain meds. Makes sense to me.

Might not be pretty but it is reality. This guy has virtually no chance of surviving at this stage so the state is not going to spend a fortune on worthless treatments.

And I think more states should allow doctor assisted euthanasia. More on principal than anything else, as most terminally ill people do NOT need to ask for a special script to do the job. People need to come to grip with reality and stop pretending like "death is just sooo unfair let's blame someone". Everyone dies.


[edit on 27-5-2009 by Sonya610]