NC Sez: Nah,  there’s no worship of the Obamunt goin’ on ’round here!  Nah!

UPDATE I:  This grandmother died.  I didn’t know that as it wasn’t reported in this article.  Gee, I wonder why that information was withheld.

NC Sez: WARNING!  DOUBLESPEAK AHEAD: Notice the title of this lamestream Article: Death Drugs Cause Uproar in Oregon.

It should be titled: Death with Dignity Law combined with Government Run Health Care used to murder Oregon Citizens to save the bottom line!

When you read this piece you will find that If you believe in Life and all that comes with life which includes sickness and pain, you had better leave Oregon who obviously stands for death and this lie that dignity makes dying nicer to look at. The Oregon Government is now taking advantage of a so called Death with Dignity Law to deny life giving drug benefits to Oregon Citizens who are on the Oregon government run health plan.

Is it possible that Oregon voters didn’t realize that one of the “unintended” consequences for “physician assisted earlier termination” for planet walking is their own government, the STATE OF OREGON’S HEALTH PLAN aka government run health care, would not have to pay for drugs that extend life IF one is terminal or A SENIOR CITIZEN? Say it isn’t so,  even though voters were warned and warned and warned not to vote for such a dangerous “dignity so death looks nicer”, bill!

Did Oregon voters understand that their own BIG BUBBY, CRADLE TO GRAVE GOVERNMENT would actually force death upon its own Citizens instead of giving them the CHOICE to live or die? Whatever happened to the mantra, “KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY! IT’S MY BODY, MY CHOICE!”?

Self-induced murder will be on the November ballot in Washington state.  This citizen can only hope that voters will get a clue that government run health care, in any fashion,  forces death upon its Citizens as a means to save money.

So called Death with Dignity laws only give Citizen sponsored legal permission for governments to do away with Seasoned Citizens and those family members suffering with terminal  illnesses.  Shame on the voters of Oregon for forcing their will upon others!

Terminally Ill Denied Drugs for Life, But Can Opt for Suicide

by SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES

Aug. 6, 2008 —

The news from Barbara Wagner’s doctor was bad, but the rejection letter from her insurance company was crushing.

The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.

What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.

“It was horrible,” Wagner told ABCNews.com. “I got a letter in the mail that basically said if you want to take the pills, we will help you get that from the doctor and we will stand there and watch you die. But we won’t give you the medication to live.”

Critics of Oregon’s decade-old Death With Dignity Law — the only one of its kind in the nation — have been up in arms over the indignity of her unsigned rejection letter. Even those who support Oregon’s liberal law were upset.

The incident has spilled over the state border into Washington, where advocacy groups are pushing for enactment of Initiative 1000 in November, legalizing a similar assisted-death law.

Opponents say the law presents all involved with an “unacceptable conflict” and the impression that insurance companies see dying as a cost-saving measure. They say it steers those with limited finances toward assisted death.

NC Points out:  Notice very carefully the hidden deceit here: It is the GOVERNMENT that declining life giving drugs to this woman, NOT any private insurance company. Stay on point:  Her own government is pushing her into death!  They are trying to make all private health insurance companies look bad when they are in fact NOT the one doing it here!

“News of payment denial is tough enough for a terminally ill person to bear,” said Steve Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion and Choices, a group that supports coverage of physician-assisted death.

NC Sez: Doesn’t Hopcraft mean death needs “dignity” (whatever the hell THAT means!)  to make it look nicer?

Letter’s Impact ‘Devastating’

“Imagine if the recipient had pinned his hope for survival on an unproven treatment, or if this were the first time he understood the disease had entered the terminal phase. The impact of such a letter would be devastating,” he told ABCNews.com.

Wagner, who had worked as a home health care worker, a waitress and a school bus driver, is divorced and lives in a low-income apartment. She said she could not afford to pay for the medication herself.

“I’m not too good today,” said Wagner, a Springfield great-grandmother. “But I’m opposed to the [assisted suicide] law. I haven’t considered it, even at my lowest point.”

NC sez:  Good for you!

A lifelong smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005 and quit. The state-run Oregon Health Plan generously paid for thousands of dollars worth of chemotherapy, radiation, a special bed and a wheelchair, according to Wagner.

NC Sez:  Gee, if this woman never smoked in her life and had gotten lung cancer would the Oregon gov’t then pay for her cancer drugs?  NO!  Did the reporter ask this question to the Oregon gov’t?  I doubt it!

The cancer went into remission, but in May, Wagner found it had returned. Her oncologist prescribed the drug Tarceva to slow its growth, giving her another four to six months to live.

But under the insurance plan, (NC Reminds:  GOVERNMENT run health insurance) she can  only receive “palliative” or comfort care, because the drug does not meet the “five-year, 5 percent rule” — that is, a 5 percent survival rate after five years.

NC Remembers:  Didn’t Obama once say, “Just give them a pill?”

A 2005 New England Journal of Medicine study found the drug erlotinib, marketed as Tarceva, does marginally improve survival for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who had completed standard chemotherapy.

The median survival among patients who took erlotinib was 6.7 months compared to 4.7 months for those on placebo. At one year, 31 percent of the patients taking erlotinib were still alive compared to 22 percent of those taking the placebo.

“It’s been tough,” said her daughter, Susie May, who burst into tears while talking to ABCNews.com. “I was the first person my mom called when she got the letter,” said May, 42. “While I was telling her, ‘Mom, it will be ok,’ I was crying, but trying to stay brave for her.”

“I’ve talked to so many people who have gone through the same problems with the Oregon Health Plan,” she said.

Indeed, Randy Stroup, a 53-year-old Dexter resident with terminal prostate cancer, learned recently that his doctor’s request for the drug mitoxantrone had been rejected. The treatment, while not a cure, could ease Stroup’s pain and extend his life by six months.

Playing With ‘My Life’

“What is six months of life worth?” he asked in a report in the Eugene Register-Guard. “To me it’s worth a lot. This is my life they’re playing with.”

NC Asks:  Well, Stroup, did you vote for this bill?  Did you say something stupid like, “I’m personally opposed to self-inflicted suicide but who am I to push my beliefs onto others?

The Oregon Health Plan was established in 1994 and the physician-assisted death law was enacted in 1997. The state was recently hailed by a University of Wisconsin study as having one of the nation’s top pain-management policies.

NC points out: Yeah, when you’re dead you can’t feel pain.  I see how that makes sense to a liberal!

The health plan, for those whose incomes fall under the poverty level, prioritizes coverage — from prevention first, to chronic disease management, treatment of mental health, heart and cancer treatment.

“It’s challenging because health care is very expensive, but that’s not the real essence of our priority list,” said Dr. Jeanene Smith, administrator for the Office of for Oregon’s Health Policy and Research staff.

“We need evidence to say it is a good use of taxpayer’s dollars,” she said. “It may be expensive, but if it does wonders, we cover it.”

NC sez: Well there you have it!!    It’s about MONEY people!  It’s not about death with dignity; it’s all about money and those stupid lefturds spouting off calling companies evil because they want to make a profit and who aren’t out there killing people to save money!  They are using their profits for research and producing better treatments. No, it’s the governments who are out to kill people over money!

The state also regularly evaluates and updates approvals for cancer treatments. “We look as exhaustively as we can with good peer review evidence,” she said.

The health plan takes “no position” on the physician-assisted suicide law, according to spokesman Jim Sellers.

NC Sez:  What?  Then why are you declining the necessary drugs if you are taking “no position”?  The state of Oregon took a position and that was to save money by declining cancer treatment because this woman wasn’t worth spending money on! That IS taking a position!

The terminally ill who qualify can receive pain medication, comfort and hospice care, “no matter what the cost,” he said.

But Sellers acknowledged the letter to Wagner was a public relations blunder and something the state is “working on.”

NC Points out: Yeah, public relations “blunder” means: someone leaked the story! They just can’t receive actual treatment!

“Now we have to review to ensure sensitivity and clarity,” Sellers told ABCNews.com “Not only is the patient receiving bad news, but insensitivity on top of that. This is something that requires the human touch.”

Sellers said that from now on insurance officials will likely “pick up the phone and have a conversation,” he said.

NC points out: The gov’t only cares about how they send out the information, not that the patient gets the treatment.  The gov’t just wants to make sure that the bad news is conveyed properly and as privately as possible, so as to prevent public outrage!

But a 1998 study from Georgetown University’s Center for Clinical Bioethics found a strong link between cost-cutting pressures on physicians and their willingness to prescribe lethal drugs to patients — were it legal to do so.

The study warns that there must be “a sobering degree of caution in legalizing [assisted death] in a medical care environment that is characterized by increasing pressure on physicians to control the cost of care.”

Cancer drugs can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000 a month. The cost of lethal medication, on the other hand, is about $35 to $50.

NC points out: Again with the deception and double speak.  This is the STATE OF OREGON making this decision and NOT any doctor!  It was the DOCTOR who prescribed the life-extending meds and it was the GOVERNMENT who said NO!

Advocates for the proposed Washington law say that while offering death benefits but not health care can be perceived as a cost-cutting, “respectable studies” say otherwise.

NC sez: nobody cares what some stupid study sez when their loved one is dying.  Especially when this stupid lame stream reporter can’t report the facts,  but instead confuses the reader with unnecessary information to fill space.

“The reason is that hospice care, where most patients are at the end of life is relatively inexpensive,” Anne Martens, spokesman for Washington’s Death With Dignity Initiative, told ABCNews.com.

But even those who support liberal death laws say Wagner’s predicament is reflective of insurance attitudes nationwide.

NC Sez:  DOUBLESPEAK WARNING – “insurance attitudes” actually means gov’t insurance attitudes!

Case Is Not Unique

“Her case is hardly unique,” said Michigan lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, who defended Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s crusade to legalize physician-assisted deaths. “In the rest of the country insurance companies are making these decisions and are not paying for suicide,” Fieger told ABCNews.com. “Involuntary choices are foisted on people all the time by virtue of denials.”

“I am surprised there hasn’t been a revolt in this country,” he said. “It happens every day and people are helpless.”

NC Sez:  DOUBLESPEAK WARNING – Kevorkian’s crusade against life has lead to the Oregon gov’t murdering people to save money.

Indeed, one executive suffering from a rare and potentially fatal form of liver cancer is fighting his insurance company for coverage. Oncologists from a major teaching hospital in New York City have prescribed Sutent — a medication that costs about $4,000 a month and could extend his life expectancy.

NC Sez:  DOUBLESPEAK WARNING –  AGAIN, It’s the GOVERNMENT who is declining the necessary drugs NOT private insurance companies.

“Most of my objections are that some second rate guy on the staff of the insurance company is second-guessing one of the foremost authorities and trumping his judgment,” said the 57-year-old executive, who didn’t want his name used to protect his privacy.

“I am fortunate to have the financial resources and the ability to fight these people who would rather these you die,” he told ABCNews.com.

Dr. Jonathan Groner, clinical professor of surgery at OSU College of Medicine and Public Health in Columbus, Ohio, said some patients may want to prolong their lives for a life-cycle event, like a birth or wedding.

“A course of chemo would not cure, but would subdue the cancer long enough to be meaningful,” he told ABCNEWS.com. “There are many people with slow-growing but nonetheless metastatic cancer for whom death, while inevitable, is many years away.”

“The problem with the Oregon plan is it sounds like administrators, not physicians, are making treatment decisions,” he said. “And if a patient can get assisted death paid for but not cancer treatment, the choice is obvious.”

NC Sez: EXACTLY!  BureaucraZies are deciding who lives and dies and it was pro-gov’t, private citizens like Jack Kevorkian who crusaded for these bureaucratic choices to be made!

Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society and author of “Final Exit,” who helped write the Oregon Death With Dignity Law, said only about 30 people a year choose an assisted death, which must be approved by two doctors.

NC Sez:  DOUBLESPEAK WARNING – AGAIN,  There is no choice in this matter. It’s being taken away by the GOVERNMENT!

“It’s purely optional and the patient and doctor can walk away from it,” the 78-year-old told ABCNEWS.com. “It’s not the mad rush our enemies predicted and for our residents it has worked out well.”

His own wife, Jean, was diagnosed with fast-growing breast cancer in 1975 and asked him to help find drugs to help her die. At 42, she chose to take them and ended her life.

NC Sez:  SHE choose to murder herself NOT the gov’t!

Humphry says the Oregon Health Plan’s approach to coverage is sound.

“People cling to life and look for every sort of crazy cure to keep alive and usually they are better off not to have done it,” he said.

NC Sez: Can you believe this guy who has pushed his view through this deception of Oregon Voters.  When he was advocating self-inflicted murder did he warn voters that the gov’t would eventually take their choices away from them?

Meanwhile Wagner has faith in her medicine, not assisted death. Now, at the request of her doctor, the pharmaceutical company Genentech is giving her Tarceva free of charge for one year.

NC Sez: Oh, those evil profit making private companies.  EVIL!  They’re just EVIL! We sure don’t see the gov’t of Oregon giving her these drugs for free!

“The doctor did say it would put a lid on the cancer and I am hopeful,” she said.

Wagner’s daughter Susie May says her mother is a fighter. “I think we all knew that this is her last hope,” she said.

Even Wagner’s ex-husband, Dennis Wagner of Springfield, has weighed in on the ethical dilemma.

“My reaction is pretty typical,” he told ABCNews.com. “I am sick and tired of the dollar being the bottom line of everything. We need to put human life above the dollar.”

NC Sez:  AMEN!  People first–Gov’t SUCKS!  Human Life above both Government and the Dollar!

NC Sez:  What will the gub’ment pay you next for spying on your neighbor?