Marilyn Golden of the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund is living proof that a disabled woman can face unwanted obstacles and thrive. She tried to prompt committee Democrats to think about the many things that can and do go wrong. Doctors misdiagnose. Family members have the ability to make elderly relatives feel unwanted and alone. Lethal prescriptions are cheaper than complicated treatment. Disease can lead to depression, which can be treated. When people first get a horrific diagnosis, they think they want to die; later many find that their prognosis turned out to be wrong, or that they want to live what life they have left.
Golden’s group compiled a list of troubling cases from Oregon — including a woman with dementia, a potentially depressed woman who had breast cancer for 20 years, sick people with financial problems. The Oregon Health Plan would not cover chemotherapy treatment for a lung cancer patient and a man with prostate cancer, but offered to pay for physician-assisted suicide. Golden chalks up the low numbers to Oregon’s toothless law that has no mechanism to uncover abuses.