Terminally Ill Oregon Patients Denied Treatment but Reminded They Can Choose Physician-Assisted Suicide.

In Washington state, the showdown for ballot initiative I-1000 is entering the final stages. This November, Washington voters will be faced with the decision whether to become the second state to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

Washington's neighbor Oregon, the only state to legalize assisting suicide, has over the past 10 years given numerous examples of how dangerous such legalization can be. Over the past several weeks, two such examples have been the cause of much outrage in Oregon, unnerving even many of those sympathetic to proposals such as 1-1000.

Within the month of one another, Oregon's state-sponsored health care plan has issued letters denying payment for cancer treatments for two different patients. However, in the same devastating letters, the state reiterated that it would pay for drugs to commit suicide.

Oregon is the only state that both allows assisted suicide and openly rations health care. Pro-lifers, and others, have long warned of the deadly consequences that flow from the motivation to reduce costs.

Cancer drugs can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000 a month. Lethal medication, on the other hand, costs less that $100.

As a general rule, the state-run Oregon insurance plan only covers drugs that meet the "five-year, 5 percent rule"meaning, a 5% survival rate after five years. If a patient did not meet this exclusive and outdated criterion, all that he would be entitled to would be medication for palliative careand to a reminder of the option of assisted suicide.

It is not hard to imagine the distress that Barbara Wagner must have been in when she learned that her lung cancer had returned, but on top of that, she received notice that Oregon's health plan would not pay for her treatment. Adding insult to injury, the letter did remind Wagner that the ...