Oregon State Health Care Plan Won’t Treat Woman’s Cancer But Will Pay For Her Suicide
Ahh, the wonders of government-run health care.
After weeks of bad news, things turned Barbara Wagner’s way this week.
Last month her lung cancer, in remission for about two years, was back. After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that could slow the cancer growth and extend her life, Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn’t cover it.
It would cover comfort and care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide.
This reminds me of a story my grandmother, who is in her nineties, heard at one of her cancer support groups (she’s a breast cancer survivor). A woman from Canada who was in her mid-seventies at the time said that she had moved to America so that she could get her cancer treated at an American hospital because in Canada she was told that she was too old to be treated.
At the time she told the story her cancer was in remission and everything pointed to her having a decade two of life yet to live.
Can you imagine what it would feel like to have your doctor tell you you’re too old to be worth fixing? Or having a government bureaucrat tell you that they won’t pay to fight the illness that’s killing you but they will pay for you to kill yourself?
That’s the reality of government-run health care.
