Who was Barbara Wagner?

My kids always hated it when I got up on my soapbox and started ranting and raving about this or that issue. I spoke against doctor assisted suicide long before the state of Oregon passed a law permitting. I said that Dr Death (Korvorkian) was just a preview of what was to come. They said that I was crazy and it couldn’t happen in America. After all, this was 20th century in America not Germany, Russia, Cambodia, Sudan or China. These other mentioned countries when trough mass genocide and killings of their own citizens. That couldn’t happen here.

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. (ABC News story August 2008)

This woman was cast aside by the state run medical coverage and left with the option to die in pain or by doctor assisted suicide. No help came from the government charged with protecting and caring for the weakest of the people. The odd part is that help did come. It came not from some bleeding heart liberal organization but from an EVIL pharmaceutical company.

The point is that it is happening in America. It will be slow at first but it will pick up as doctors become scarce and money even scarcer. If National Health Care takes over treatment will be rationed according to whom the "medical board" deems the best fit for the treatment. Parents will be pressured to accept the option of doctor-assisted death or living in pain and being a burden on society and their families. No one over fifty wants to think about not being able to support himself or herself and having to go live with one of their children.

Barbara Wegner’s story is just one of many that you will be hearing about as time goes by if the health care bill is passed. One day it could be this Groughy Old Man’s story that you read about. Or, maybe it will be your mother or father’s story that you have to live with.