In Oregon, terminally ill residents are no longer being offered treatment through the state health plan. The state will now only offer assistance for "means of providing comfort" to those patients, including doctor assisted suicide.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392962,00.html
Isn't this the same practice the Soviet Union, Red China, Western Communist Europe, Cuba, and all the other Red countries used to deal with their citizens who were looking for some hope to keep living?
xwpopper Wrote:In Oregon, terminally ill residents are no longer being offered treatment through the state health plan. The state will now only offer assistance for "means of providing comfort" to those patients, including doctor assisted suicide.
Quote: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.
Note the bolded word "some".
To further clarify:
Quote: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.
Still, it is chilling. I have no problem with offering assisted suicide. I have long thought that this is a civilized thing to provide for those who wish to die.
However, denying treatment unless the treatment has a better than 5% chance of increasing your life by at least 5 years is wrong, IMO.
Quote:I have no problem with offering assisted suicide.
I have no problem with doctor assisted suicide if the patient is the one who suggests it first. I do have a problem with it if the state is the one who first suggests it--especially when, as in Oregon, the primary reason the suggestion is being made is to save the state money.
[quote author=bargainbloodhound link=topic=18222.msg71679#msg71679 date=1217442654]
Quote:I have no problem with offering assisted suicide.
I have no problem with doctor assisted suicide if the patient is the one who suggests it first. I do have a problem with it if the state is the one who first suggests it--especially when, as in Oregon, the primary reason the suggestion is being made is to save the state money.
[/quote]
True and agreed.
tolensmiley: