Public “Health”? Yup, That’s It!
Only hours after I told you about the Oregon Health Plan’s rather callous way of keeping costs down, to wit, offering suicide instead of medical care if the ilness is serious and really life threatening (isn’t life “life threatening”?), The Oregonian reports on another case of the same!
“The Register-Guard of Eugene…. described the sad plight of Barbara Wagner, a 64-year-old Springfield woman with lung cancer.
After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that would cost $4,000 a month, the newspaper reported, “Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn’t cover the treatment, but that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide.”
I’m glad I’m no longer living in Oregon and, at least as long as I stay working, I’m covered by my HMO.
There’s kind of a curious twist, though, to the Oregonian’s editorial. They really have no problem with the fact the Oregon Health Plan is refusing to pay for the woman’s medical needs. I know that if my HMO refused me, or any evil profit-mongering insurance company refused to pay my medical bills because “it just wasn’t probable I would live happily on for at least five more years, so it just wasn’t worth the bother at all”, all hell would break loose” in headlines around the country, and cable news stories, and the lobbying anecdotes of those pushing for national health care or universal insurance. But not in this Oregonian editorial. No, they recognize the fiscal responsibilities and restraints of their own state’s public Health Plan. Gotta protect the taxpayers (who voted for this, btw), you know.
No, the problem The Oregonian editors had with Barbara’s situation was something else. They put it this way:
“In Wagner’s case, administrators of the Oregon Health Plan had to make a difficult call. But that’s what they do every day in performing the tough, thankless job of rationing government-paid health care to the needy.
What’s unacceptable, however, is that Wagner’s rejection letter included the offer of payment for doctor-assisted death. (my emphasis)Such notification creates at least the appearance of an ethical conflict: state encouragement of dying as a cost-saving measure.
As the only state that both allows assisted suicide and tries to ration health care, Oregon has created a fine ethical line for state officials to navigate. In this case, they stepped over it. For the sake of ethical clarity in Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, the state health plan should stop offering to pay for those who use it.”
Like, they not only are fine with the idea that you don’t get paid to live (or at least try to), they are actually objecting to the idea of offering to pay for your “state-assisted suicide”. Geez, I bet they’d be OK with paying the humane society to put her dog down, though! But for Barbara (or maybe, if you should fall upon similar hard times) the Oregonian’s editors have this to say:: “Get your own damn pills if you want to take a “(easy”?) short cut out. If you can’t afford them, try some rat poison from the local hardware store.”
