Readers React: Sorting out ethical issues with end-of-life law won’t be easy

To the editor: Ethical debates should be expected and welcome as a fundamental part of California’s end-of-life law, which — as shown by the case of Barbara Wagner, a terminally ill Oregon resident who was denied coverage for life-extending medication but given assisted suicide as an option — is still going through amendments to improve aspects of the law that were not considered at its inception. (“Will California’s end-of-life law push lethal drugs over costlier care?,” Oct. 18)

It was thanks to Wagner’s emotional story that Oregon decided to prohibit in a treatment denial letter information on the availability of aid-in-dying drugs.

There will be other cases that will prompt further adjustments, and there will always be debates on what constitutes futile care, as well as financial considerations that, unfortunately, are an intrinsic part of the grim picture of mortality.

Berta Graciano-Buchman, Beverly Hills

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To the editor: This front-page article may set a world record for the speed at which a newspaper tries to avoid a mea culpa by painfully stating the obvious.

After months of many articles in The Times expressing support for the End of Life Option Act, the bill gets rammed through the Legislature and signed by the governor. But it appears that large institutions may try to save money by steering patients to suicide. Isn’t that a surprise.

The article quotes a bioethicist who reassures us with his own 17-year-old study showing that insurers would not save much money this way.

Right. I mean, nothing else has changed since 1998, so why would companies try to steer patients away from expensive intensive care and medications now?

It will become increasingly clear that something advocated by The Times was a terrible mistake. How can the paper not lose credibility? I would advise keeping these apologetic articles coming.

Richard Williams, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Although many of us can empathize with a terminally ill cancer patient’s wish to extend her life a few extra months by taking a very pricey drug, this is not an ethics issue. Tear-jerking stories like this one are a major obstacle to reducing healthcare costs.

If a very sick patient wishes to extend her life for a few months at huge expense, there is nothing to prevent her from paying for this drug out of her own pocket.

Although the article implies that Oregon’s state-run system was heartless for having provided doctor-aided death as one of the treatment options for the patient, I would counter that this was in fact a compassionate gesture for someone who was crawling along in this painful journey.

But if she had been denied a drug — however expensive — that would have cured her disease, I would have considered that criminal.

John T. Chiu, Newport Beach

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