The Right to Die
Posted in Health Care
Oct. 9, 2005 at 16:28
by BrendaBee
The Right to Die October 9, 2005
Oregon is in the forefront of the country again in trying to cope with spiraling health care costs as well as the human tragedy of keeping people alive far beyond the point where life has ceased to have any meaning with it's law allowing doctors to aid terminally ill patients in committing suicide. This law is now being challenged in the Supreme Court.
Years ago Oregon passed a law limiting the services Medicaid would offer to terminally ill people. In a nutshell, each illness was evaluated as to the effectiveness of current treatment and then it was determined at what point treatment would be terminated. The list of illnesses also included illnesses for which no treatment would be given either because there was no available treatment, or treatment of that one illness would not appreciably extend the person’s life due to the presence of other diseases the patient may have that were terminal. There was a provision for continual monitoring of advances in treatments so that the list could be made current with scientific advances in medicine. The law called for all patients to be given pain and any other medication to allow them comfort during their last days. This law applied to all age groups, but was prompted by studies that showed that in most cases more dollars are spent on medical care during the last year of life than in a person's entire lifetime before. Since the Oregon study there have been many studies done that arrived at this same conclusion. Oregon’s lawmakers decided that by limiting these non-effective medical treatments for terminally ill patients there would be more funds available for programs for children. Children are grossly deprived of medical care in the United States! Of course children can’t vote or lobby officials, and have no advocacy groups as powerful as AARP.
The Federal Government threatened to take away Oregon’s Medicaid Grant which accounted for 60% of the states Medicaid funds. So naturally the Oregon Healthcare Plan was rescinded. And, tax payers continued to shoulder the burden of keeping the elderly and others at the end of their lives alive and suffering all kinds of treatment in a futile effort to gain a few more months of misery. Doctors had a hand in the federal action; some in their zeal to save lives I am sure, but others in the fine opportunity given to milk the ‘cash cow’.
It was my misfortune early in life to become well acquainted with the doctor prone to milking. I decided to change careers and one summer accepted a position as a social services agent for the Aging Department of the county I was currently residing in. My first day on the job I was to pick up an elderly lady from the hospital and transport her back to the nursing/retirement home where she lived. A surgeon had done a double, yes double!, radical mastectomy on this 73 year old woman who was literally riddled with cancer according to the written notes of other social workers who had been on this case. The only thing the double radical mastectomy did for this woman was cause her pain and suffering! I was dumbfounded, and when I returned to the office I immediately spoke with my supervisor feeling that this inhuman and fraudulent act should be reported to the state medical board at the very least. She empathized with me and told me that there simply was nothing that could be done. In her words “all doctors do this”. That was the first of many such actions I saw perpetrated on my elderly clients by health care workers that summer. It is true that any patient may refuse treatment, but when faced with the medical authority of a doctor advising you to undergo the treatment the will to live and hope of better health have a strong bearing on a person’s decision. Parents will do and try absolutely anything to save their child, and the elderly are often mentally unable to make decisions on their own and rely upon the health care provider to make the decisions for them. After that summer of enlightenment I went back to teaching feeling that there was nothing I could accomplish as a social worker in our society of greed and corruption except to cause myself the pain of frustration that eventually would lead to cynicism. Perhaps as a teacher I could somehow help shape ethics and morality in my students who would be the future doctors and lawyers and shop keepers.
Since the Oregon Healthcare Plan was rescinded many states have adopted laws restricting health care in specific and extreme cases of terminal illness. Recently in Texas there was a case where a terminally ill infant was allowed to die. Then of course there was the Terry Schiavo case that has now set a precedence. But these cases are only for the very extremely ill or malformed and may take years of court battles to finally allow the doctors to help the patients die comfortably.
As stated above, Oregon has now adopted a law to allow doctors to assist in the suicide of terminally ill patients and that law has now come before the Supreme Court. Speaking from my viewpoint as a 64 year old in good health but still very much aware that I am on the down side of this lifetime, I sincerely hope that the court upholds a person’s right to choose his time and method of death. My worst nightmare is being sick and weak and possibly suffering also from dementia and being hooked up to tubes feeding me and draining waste products from my body, and wires keeping my heart and lungs pumping my old and used up blood thru a pain racked deteriorating body. Add the trauma of periodically being taken to the operating room for one more assault on this non-functioning husk. Of course this operation is preceded by all sorts of tests and scans where I am struck and poked and strapped in and made to lie still for upwards of an hour adding to my already excruciating pain. This nightmare is no joke or exaggeration because it is going on daily in our hospitals and nursing homes. I can only hope since the Supreme Court Justices are themselves in their later years that my nightmare is theirs also! and that they make their judgments accordingly
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