The State Alternative to Life Saving Medical Care ,,,

Barbara Wagner is covered under the state-run health care plan in Oregon, established 1994.

Last year her lung cancer returned. A treatment was available.

So was an alternative.

Looking at the difference between spending $300,000 on saving her life, or their alternative plan, the officials of Oregon's medical system told Barbara that only the alternative was available to her.

It would cost the state $100.

It is called "Assisted Suicide."

Physicians for Reform -- but who advocate patient-centered health care -- document her story on their web site.

Oregon state officials controlled the process of healthcare decision-making—not Barbara and her physician. Chemotherapy would cost the state $4,000 every month she remained alive; the drugs for physician-assisted suicide held a one-time expense of less than $100. Barbara’s treatment plan boiled down to accounting. To cover chemotherapy state policy demanded a five percent patient survival rate at five years. As a new drug, Tarceva did not meet this dispassionate criterion. To Oregon, Barbara was no longer a patient; she had become a "negative economic unit."

A negative economic unit. Worth too little to save.

That's the same kind of happy talk you hear around the edges of those who are pushing federal health care reform. People like Ezekial Emmanuel, Rahm's doctor brother, have talked and written openly of the need to quit saving people who are too damaged, too old, suffering from dementia, because they are a drain on society's resources.

This is not the America I grew up loving, and I hope it is not the America in which I die.

You may be young and healthy now, but what happens if you have that tragic car accident that leaves you in "negative economic" status?

Read, learn and contemplate your fate.