SB 128: The Promise of Patient Choice and Control is False; the Potential Cost is Enormous.

This is a memo to the California State Senate. To view the original hard copy version, please click here.  To view the attachments, click here. A web version below.

Thank you for your interest. Please tell your Senators to vote NO on SB 128.

Margaret Dore. Esq., MBA
www.margaretdore.com
www.choiceillusion.org

I.  INTRODUCTION 

I am an attorney in Washington State where physician-assisted suicide is legal.[1] Our law is modeled on a similar law in Oregon. Both laws are similar to the proposed bill, SB 128.[2]

SB 128 seeks to legalize both physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, which it terms “aid-in-dying.” The term, aid-in-dying, is traditionally a term for euthanasia.[3] “Eligible” patients may have years, even decades, to live.

The bill is also promoted as assuring patient choice and control, which is false. I urge you to reject this measure. Do not make Washington and Oregon’s mistake.

Assisted Suicide: How One Woman Chose to Die, Then Survived

http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/18/assisted-suicide-how-one-woman-chose-to-die-then-survived/

Kelsey Harkness / May 18, 2015

In 1994, Jeanne Hall, a resident of King City, Ore., voted in favor of Ballot Measure 16, which for the first time in the United States, would allow terminally ill patients to end their own lives through physician-assisted suicide.

“I thought, hey, I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer,” Hall told The Daily Signal. “So I checked it. Then it became legal.”

That day at the ballot box, Hall never could have predicted that more than 15 years later, she would be diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer.

Doctors gave Hall, who was 55 at the time, two options: She could get radiation and chemotherapy and attempt to fight the cancer, or she could take a lethal dose of barbiturates to end her life.

“I was calling it over,” she said. “I wasn’t going to do chemo. When I heard what might take place in radiation "I wasn’t going to do it. I looked for the easy way out.”

Without treatment, Hall was given six months to a year to live, and therefore qualified for physician-assisted suicide through Oregon’s Death With Dignity law.

“She was terminal because she was refusing treatment,” Dr. Kenneth Stevens, one of Hall’s two cancer doctors, told The Daily Signal. “It’s like a person could be considered terminal if they’re not taking [their] insulin or [other] medications.”

An open letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee: Enactment of SB 128 could cost millions.

I was prepared to testify at the hearing on SB 128, but the opposition was only allowed two speakers and I would have been the third. Below, please find my prepared remarks:

* * * 

Chairman Lara and Members of the Committee:

Enactment of SB 128 will potentially cost California millions of dollars. I say this due to Oregon's experience with a similar law. SB 128 is modeled on that law.

I have prepared a memo with backup documentation, which supports what I'm saying. I have also provided you with individual tabbed copies.

Memo to Senate Appropriations Committee: "Vote 'NO' on SB 128: The financial impact is potentially 'enormous.'"

By Margaret K. Dore, Esq., MBA

To view a pdf version,  please click here.

A. Introduction

SB 128 seeks to legalize physician-assisted suicide.  The bill is based on a similar law in Oregon, which was enacted in 1997.  In Oregon, the law is rarely used, but since passage, there has been a significant increase in other (conventional) suicides.  This increase is consistent with a suicide contagion in which legalization and promotion of physician-assisted suicide has led to an increase in other suicides.  Moreover, the financial cost is “enormous.”  A government report from Oregon states:

In 2010 alone, self-inflicted injury hospitalization charges exceeded 41 million dollars.

This Committee must vote NO unless the proponents can show that California will not have a similar increase in conventional suicides. Otherwise, the financial cost in California could be “enormous.”