The Deacon's Bench
A terminally ill California woman says her insurance company denied her coverage for chemotherapy treatment but offered to pay for her to kill herself, shortly after California passed a law permitting physician-assisted suicide.
Stephanie Packer, a wife and mother of four who was diagnosed with a terminal form of scleroderma, said her insurance company initially indicated it would pay for her to switch to a different chemotherapy drug at the recommendation of her doctors.
“For a while, five months or so, we’ve been trying to get me on a different chemotherapy drug for the infusions, because my doctor felt that it would be less toxic than some of the other drugs that we were going to be using,” Ms. Packer said in a video distributed by The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network on Monday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=S4z7GWP7EG8
“And I was going back and forth, and finally I had heard back from them, and they said, ‘Yes, we’re going to get it covered, we just have to fix a couple of things,’” she continued.
But shortly after California’s End of Life Option Act, which authorizes physicians to diagnose a life-ending dose of medication to patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live, went into effect, Ms. Packer’s insurance company had a change of heart.
“And when the law was passed, it was a week later I received a letter in the mail saying they were going to deny coverage for the chemotherapy that we were asking for,” Ms. Packer said.
UPDATE: Turns out that story is from two years ago — a sharper editor would have caught that, duh — but the National Catholic Register’s Peter Smith had an update last summer.
Stephanie Packer’s lungs are hardening, but she has not lost her voice.
The 37-year-old Catholic mother of four living in Orange County, California, has outlived her prognosis of terminal scleroderma by five years. She has just outlived California’s assisted-suicide law, and her health insurer’s subsequent offer to end her life with a $1.20 copay, by three years.
Packer spoke with Register staff writer Peter Jesserer Smith after California’s appellate court declined to block a state judge’s ruling May 15 that the state Legislature improperly legalized assisted suicide in a special session in 2015 meant to address a Medicaid funding shortfall.
Packer supported the efforts of Life Legal Defense Foundation attorneys over the past three years to challenge the End of Life Option Act, which became void May 25. The legal battle is not over, however, and is expected to reach the California Supreme Court.
The Catholic woman wants people to know assisted suicide devalues the lives of people who are approaching the end of life. She said what people with terminal illnesses and their caregivers need are society’s compassion and loving holistic support. They do not need “aid in dying,” but “aid in living,” and they can teach important lessons to those who accompany them to the end.
And here’s a recent video interview with her:
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