The End in
Two Acts
Those who couldn’t afford decent end-of-life care might choose death to lift the financial burden on loved ones. Those with life-long disabilities might conclude that their lives were not valued if society provided a way for a quick exit. More sinister was the argument that the state might be tempted to put less priority on providing assistance for the poor and disabled because the option of death was easier and cheaper.
So far, the none of that has happened in Oregon.
All of the people who have used the Act have had health care coverage, and almost all of those who died by ingesting a lethal dose were enrolled in hospice — and thus already receiving compassionate end-of-life care. Well educated Oregonians (those with a baccalaureate degree or higher) were almost eight times more likely to use the Act than those without a high school diploma. And, contrary to fears, those with lifetime disabilities have not used the Act. Oregonians who hastened their own deaths were most likely to be in the end stages of cancer, AIDS or ALS.
As for the broader concern that the option of physician-assisted death would make a state’s citizens, politicians and medical community callous to end-of-life care, the opposite has happened in Oregon. The state is a national pioneer in such care, according to national data compiled at Dartmouth and studies conducted by the Oregon Health Sciences University Center for Ethics in Health Care.