Submitted to PI
As a physician and teacher, I am very proud of my profession's traditions. In that spirit, I object to I-1000 and suggest the initiative is unfair to both the people it supposedly serves and to the physicians who would need to practice under this law.
Despite the advertising, voters need to understand that I-1000 does not apply to people with chronic illnesses. We all feel for patients like Governor Gardner, who may suffer for years from debilitating diseases that may even prevent their talking to family or physicians.
I-1000 does not help the chronically ill. I 1000 is only supposed to help people with six months to live..
How would the initiative change terminal care? Under current law, a physician is free to prescribe drugs that may shorten a patient's life as long as the intent is relief from suffering. Decisions like this are very difficult, often involving very personal discussions between physician, patient, family and, in some cases, clergy. The decisions are made privately.
Under I-1000, these precious last days of a patient's life become a matter for the government involvement, requiring a formal process. The burdens of this process may explain why under 30 people a year in Oregon have chosen this option and most physicians have refused to participate. I worry that under the new rules, physicians may even be deterred from the existing standards of care.
I-1000 attacks a fundamental principle of medical practice. primum non nocere, first, do no harm. These words are part of the Hippocratic Oath that most of us recited when we received our medical degree. The proponents seemingly cannot understand the profound, personal difference between a physician struggling to help a patient by relieving suffering and simply ending it all by giving the patient a lethal cocktail.
The proponents claim that I-1000 protects the patient from greedy heirs. Perhaps so, but I suggest there is a much bigger danger. If the same healthcare provider can choose between a $50 death cocktail and a $40,000 bill for six months' care, isn't the potential conflict of interest apparent?
Proponents claim abuse by HMOs has not been a problem in Oregon and I agree. Very few patients have used the option of assisted death. In part, at least for Kaiser, this turns out to be because most physicians have refused to prescribe the cocktail. Will that restraint continue to be true?
Finally, in this time of financial crisis, I-1000 avoids one issue that is overwhelming … impoverishment. Our health care system often demands a patient's assets be turned over to the health care system so that the patient will qualify for Medicare. Should physicians tell a patient that this cocktail will allow them to pass on a few thousand dollars to their kids?
5 comments:
Lee Rosenberg
to me, editpage, David, Hillel, Havivah, Barbara, spinoza1, Alex, Anne, Will
show details 4:26 PM (59 minutes ago)
Reply
Far, far too many lies and bad logic here to ignore, Steve. I'll take them on one by one.
In that spirit, I object to I-1000 and suggest the initiative is unfair to both the people it supposedly serves and to the physicians who would need to practice under this law.
This doesn't make any sense. No doctor is forced to write the prescriptions and no patient is forced to participate. Either you don't understand the initiative or you're making things up.
Despite the advertising, voters need to understand that I-1000 does not apply to people with chronic illnesses.
It's the opponents of I-1000 who are advertising this.
How would the initiative change terminal care? Under current law, a physician is free to prescribe drugs that may shorten a patient's life as long as the intent is relief from suffering.
Under I-1000, this will still be true.
Decisions like this are very difficult, often involving very personal discussions between physician, patient, family and, in some cases, clergy. The decisions are made privately.
Under I-1000, these precious last days of a patient's life become a matter for the government involvement, requiring a formal process.
Absolutely incorrect. The current way that you're used to seeing these situations dealt with will not change. Your assertion that I-1000 makes this a government process is a LIE, and numerous people have pointed that out to you. Why are you still claiming that?
The burdens of this process may explain why under 30 people a year in Oregon have chosen this option and most physicians have refused to participate.
The fact that 30 people a year in Oregon choose this option shows that it's not causing a massive change in how end-of-life situations are handled.
I-1000 attacks a fundamental principle of medical practice. primum non nocere, first, do no harm.
Incorrect. For many medical professionals, keeping patients from having this option is a form of harm.
The proponents seemingly cannot understand the profound, personal difference between a physician struggling to help a patient by relieving suffering and simply ending it all by giving the patient a lethal cocktail.
The doctor is not making the decision, Steve. This is why you are unable to understand the viewpoint of I-1000 proponents.
The proponents claim that I-1000 protects the patient from greedy heirs. Perhaps so, but I suggest there is a much bigger danger. If the same healthcare provider can choose between a $50 death cocktail and a $40,000 bill for six months' care, isn't the potential conflict of interest apparent?
The healthcare provider does not make the choice. And currently today, a healthcare provider can deny a $40,000 bill without the $50 death cocktail. All of this has been fully explained to you a number of times.
Proponents claim abuse by HMOs has not been a problem in Oregon and I agree.
Then what possible logic leads you to believe that it will be a problem here?
Very few patients have used the option of assisted death. In part, at least for Kaiser, this turns out to be because most physicians have refused to prescribe the cocktail. Will that restraint continue to be true?
No, very patients have used it because very few patients have asked for it. Qualified patients who want the cocktail in Oregon can find a doctor to prescribe it for them.
Finally, in this time of financial crisis, I-1000 avoids one issue that is overwhelming … impoverishment.
It also doesn't fix global warming. I guess that's another reason not to vote for it?
Our health care system often demands a patient's assets be turned over to the health care system so that the patient will qualify for Medicare. Should physicians tell a patient that this cocktail will allow them to pass on a few thousand dollars to their kids?
These are individuals who are already within the last few months of their life. This doesn't change their inheritance situations in any way.
I've copied some I-1000 folks on this mail because I've been telling them for a while that there's a physician out there whose reasons for opposing I-1000 border on the insane, but they didn't believe me.
Lee
I sent you an e-mail at your gmail account. Please look for it.
I-1000 Fails The Smell Test
Something smells really fishy about the I-1000 Initiative, assisted suicide. Did anyone else notice this odor, too? I first noticed several things about it that did not add up. First, someone is throwing away a LOT of money to get this thing passed, and they are doing a really bang up job of marketing it to us, like some kind of breath mints. Are they doing it for a truly virtuous purpose? Well that depends on whose interests are being pursued. People don’t just spend $2.5 Million dollars for nothing. This is an investment. You can bet they want something for their money and they are interested enough in getting it that they are lobbying the public for it. Is it the families of the terminally ill that are behind this? Could be, but I doubt it. There aren’t enough of them and they aren’t organized or well funded to do it by themselves. Our government isn’t sponsoring it. It’s a post turtle. You know, the soon-to-be-famous turtle sitting on a post in the middle of the country? (You know it didn’t get there by itself, it doesn’t belong there, it doesn’t know what to do when it gets there, and you just feel sorry for it being there.)
Given the way We The People are being lately suckered by shock therapy promulgated from top corporations and financial interests lately into voting for unpopular and toxic measures that are represented to us as desperate emergencies that we do not have time to really consider carefully (Iraq, 9/11, gas prices, and now the threatened new Great Depression), we ought to sniff twice or more at whatever is being sold to us, and be very suspicious of where corporations and lobbyists are trying to lead us into the Corporate State.
Who really benefits from assisted suicide, enough to invest in such a determined campaign? One possibility is the insurance companies. I don’t know this for a fact, but they do have the kind of money that could support this effort, and they are purely driven by economics, not by moral virtue. Usually profits and money drives these things. They would benefit because it would be more economically profitable for them to merely pay for suicide instead of paying to give an insured person a break that would keep them alive. Many people are starting to realize this, like Martin Sheen and reader Tom Gaines above. Doctors know this, and all the medical societies has come out to say they don’t want to give HMO’s any more power to practice medicine. I think this makes a lot more sense than the theory that there are wonderful people out there with $2.5 Million dollars to throw around just to save someone pain that doctors know how to treat and control anyway. Instead of I-1000, we need quality affordable health care reform.
I am against it because I am a senior parent of a charming adult autistic child, who we raised from birth at home and provided with quality care. The state has inserted itself in our family and appointed a guardian for her that she does not need who pretends to speak for her interests, and placed her in less expansive care for the state. We are still fighting it. If our economy tanks, the state guardian could decide, as Germany did in the 1930’s, that she is a “useless bread gobbler” costing the state too much money, and can be offed. I see I-1000 as a bad idea and first step down that slippery slope. If you know history, you know the outcome of where this is all going. PLEASE Washington voters, vote no on I-1000, so it can’t spread anywhere else.
I do not hink there is any conspiracy, Just some misled people trying to do what they think is a good thing.
Dear Wayne (if that is OK?)
Tx for caring enough to write. I suspect you and I agree more than we disagree.
The issues with I-1000 are that it does not do what it claims to do,
First, nothing I have read explains why the decision to make a death cocktail available should be made by a physician. This opens the door to abuses . It simply makes no sense to me to tell an insurance company that they have a choice of prescribing this cocktail to a terminally ill person vs. spending 50,000 to preserve their life.
Second, I see I-1000 as creating a barrier to the existing abilkity of physicians, family and patients to make this decision without government intruson. Again, under current law if a patient is suffering a physican has the right to offer relif from suffering even if that relief will hasten death. As I read I-1000, some attornmey will inevitably argue that sucvh a decision cna only be made by making the matter public, adding a second opinion, and likely getting some "expert" to decide the emotional basis for this hard decision.
Finally, in practice almost none of the pople who mght benefit from I-1000 in Oregon are using it. I suspect the reasons are pretty much waht O have listed above.
So, for want it is worth, I would vote for I-1000 IF it removed the healthcare provider from the loop. If a patient wants to die, I would like to respect that wish (or no intrude) but I would want the process assure that the patient has been offered alternatives that do not result in penury. Telling me that our broken system will not abuse I-1000 begs the evidence you cite of abuses we have now.
BTW, rather than a personal letter, you may want to write me at my blog .. www.seattlejew.blogspot.com. The item we are discussing can be found at http://seattlejew.blogspot.com/2008/10/assisted-suicide-is-not-good-idea.html.
On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Wayne Wolf Dear Wayne (if that is OK?)
Tx for caring enough to write. I suspect you and I agree more than we disagree.
The issues with I-1000 are that it does not do what it claims to do,
First, nothing I have read explains why the decision to make a death cocktail available should be made by a physician. This opens the door to abuses . It simply makes no sense to me to tell an insurance company that they have a choice of prescribing this cocktail to a terminally ill person vs. spending 50,000 to preserve their life.
Second, I see I-1000 as creating a barrier to the existing abilkity of physicians, family and patients to make this decision without government intruson. Again, under current law if a patient is suffering a physican has the right to offer relif from suffering even if that relief will hasten death. As I read I-1000, some attornmey will inevitably argue that sucvh a decision cna only be made by making the matter public, adding a second opinion, and likely getting some "expert" to decide the emotional basis for this hard decision.
Finally, in practice almost none of the pople who mght benefit from I-1000 in Oregon are using it. I suspect the reasons are pretty much waht O have listed above.
So, for want it is worth, I would vote for I-1000 IF it removed the healthcare provider from the loop. If a patient wants to die, I would like to respect that wish (or no intrude) but I would want the process assure that the patient has been offered alternatives that do not result in penury. Telling me that our broken system will not abuse I-1000 begs the evidence you cite of abuses we have now.
BTW, rather than a personal letter, you may want to write me at my blog .. www.seattlejew.blogspot.com. The item we are discussing can be found at http://seattlejew.blogspot.com/2008/10/assisted-suicide-is-not-good-idea.html.
On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Wayne Wolf wrote:
Dear Doctor Schwartz,
I read your Opinion about I-2000 in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Wed 8/2008.
I find your excuses to 'help' people in the last days of their life to be the problem with the medical system.
Watching my father die a death I would not wish on a dog, you are 'dead' wrong in your very sad ideas.
Your fears about money and personal assets of the patient is a red herring. Instead of talking about laws concerning that issue, you use it to deny the basic rights of a very sick and terminal patient. The right to choose their own personal 'quality of life'. You can refuse to defer to the wishes of a patient if you want, as you said, 'most physicians have refused to prescribe the cocktail". That is your right, however, be honest and tell your patients that you choose to not follow the new law that hopefully Freedom Loving Washington voters will soon pass. May your personal death be a easy and painless one. You know we all will get to death sooner or later.
Mr. Wayne J Wolf
Federal Way, WA
--
Stephen M. Schwartz
Pathology
Dear Doctor Schwartz,
I read your Opinion about I-2000 in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Wed 8/2008.
I find your excuses to 'help' people in the last days of their life to be the problem with the medical system.
Watching my father die a death I would not wish on a dog, you are 'dead' wrong in your very sad ideas.
Your fears about money and personal assets of the patient is a red herring. Instead of talking about laws concerning that issue, you use it to deny the basic rights of a very sick and terminal patient. The right to choose their own personal 'quality of life'. You can refuse to defer to the wishes of a patient if you want, as you said, 'most physicians have refused to prescribe the cocktail". That is your right, however, be honest and tell your patients that you choose to not follow the new law that hopefully Freedom Loving Washington voters will soon pass. May your personal death be a easy and painless one. You know we all will get to death sooner or later.
Mr. Wayne J Wolf
Federal Way, WA
--
Stephen M. Schwartz
Pathology
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