California governor Jerry Brown (also known as “governor
moonbeam”) has proposed a budget for 2016-17 that allocates $2.3 million for Medicaid to provide lethal drugs for assisted
suicides. Estimates are that this would come to about $5,400 per patient. Who knew suicide was so
expensive? Last fall, the governor signed the End of Life Act, making it legal
for doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs for terminally ill patients who
request them.
Bizarrely,
according to the National Review, the state’s Medicaid program does not allow patients access to
palliative care to ease their pain. Moreover, second opinions and cancer treatments are also restricted
under that program- a program that runs a deficit.
“First,
kill the old geezers” doesn’t have the same ring to it that “first, do no harm”
does, but the times, they are a-changing, as the saying goes. How can the
erstwhile Land of Milk and Honey be unable to come up with enough money for
certain pain-killers and cancer treatments, but have no trouble finding $5,400
for each and every patient that wants to die? Only decades of progressive
government can make a state more determined to help its citizens die than live.
The
official state motto was spawned by excitement over the Gold Rush in the 19th
century, when the state was young and full of dreams. Let me now use it in
describing the rush to extinguish the lives of those in their Golden Years.
“Nurse,
where did you put the secobarbital? Wait…”
“Eureka! I have found it!”
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