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WASHINGTON-- The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die. Justices, on a 6-3 vote, said that a federal drug law does not override the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people. New Chief Justice John Roberts backed the Bush administration, dissenting for the first time. The administration improperly tried to use a drug law to punish Oregon doctors who prescribe lethal doses of prescription medicines, the court majority said. Congress did not have this far-reaching intent to alter the federal-state balance, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. Kennedy is expected to become a more influential swing voter after O'Connor's departure. He is a moderate conservative who sometimes joins the liberal wing of the court in cases involving such things as gay rights and capital punishment. The ruling was a reprimand to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who in 2001 said that doctor-assisted suicide is not a legitimate medical purpose and that Oregon physicians would be punished for helping people die under the law. Kennedy said the authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for himself, Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, said that federal officials have the power to regulate the doling out of medicine. If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death, he wrote. Scalia said the court's ruling is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business. It is easy to sympathize with that position. Oregon's law covers only extremely sick people-- those with incurable diseases and who are of sound mind, and after at least two doctors agree they have six months or less to live. For Oregon's physicians and pharmacists, as well as patients and their families, today's ruling confirms that Oregon's law is valid and that they can act under it without fear of federal sanctions, state Solicitor General Mary Williams said. The ruling backed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said Ashcroft's unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide. Ashcroft had brought the case to the Supreme Court on the day his resignation was announced by the White House in 2004. The Justice Department has continued the case, under the leadership of his successor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The court's ruling was not a final say on federal authority to override state doctor-assisted suicide laws-- only a declaration that the current federal scheme did not permit that. However, it could still have ramifications outside of Oregon. This is a disappointing decision that is likely to result in a troubling movement by states to pass their own assisted suicide laws, said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which backed the administration. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and a supporter of the law, said the ruling has stopped, for now, the administration's attempts to wrest control of decisions rightfully left to the states and individuals. Thomas wrote his own dissent as well, to complain that the court's reasoning was puzzling. Roberts did not write separately. Justices have dealt with end-of-life cases before. In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that terminally ill people may refuse treatment that would otherwise keep them alive. Then, justices in 1997 unanimously ruled that people have no constitutional right to die, upholding state bans on physician-assisted suicide. That opinion, by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said individual states could decide to allow the practice. Roberts strongly hinted in October when the case was argued that he would back the administration. O'Connor had seemed ready to support Oregon's law, but her vote would not have counted if the ruling was handed down after she left the court. The case is Gonzales v. Oregon, 04-623.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company I found several opposition articles and will post the high points.... and actually I was surprised to see that there were some common concerns and actually very little concerning *a move toward socialized medicine.* This is what I found: Proposals to expand coverage to children from families earning three or four times the federal poverty limit ($61,940 and $82,600, respectively, for a family of four) also highlights the question of just how many should be subsidized, necessarily at others' expense. The $61,940 eligibility limit would cover median-income families in 14 states, and the $82,600 limit would do so in 42 states. Parents earning such incomes do not need additional subsidies for their children to get health care. ************************ Baucus, Grassley Comment Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the committee's ranking Republican Chuck Grassley (Iowa) jointly requested the CBO study but "had divergent views of its findings," according to CQ Today. Baucus, who supports spending $50 billion over five years to expand SCHIP, said the report validates the program. CQ Today reports that Baucus "expressed little concern" that people would leave private insurance plans to enroll in SCHIP, saying that every public health insurance program provides coverage to some people who might be able to obtain private health insurance (CQ Today, 5/10). Baucus said, "The fact that uninsurance for children in higher-income families has stayed about the same means that SCHIP is helping the lower-income families it's meant to serve." Grassley said the report supports his argument that SCHIP eligibility should not be expanded beyond 200% of the poverty level. He said, "This report tells us that Congress needs to make sure that whatever it does, it should actually result in more kids having health insurance, rather than simply shifting children from private to public health insurance" (CongressDaily, 5/10). **************************** SCHIP is a joint state-federal program that provides health coverage to 6.6 million children from families that live above the poverty line but have difficulty paying for private insurance. Already, the program is generous. A family of four with an income of more than $72,000 (350% of the federal poverty level) is eligible for SCHIP's subsidized insurance. Now, Congress wants to expand coverage even further, to families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level ($82,600 for a family of four). But, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 89% of families earning between 300% and 400% of the federal poverty level already have coverage. The CBO estimates that some 2 million kids already covered under private insurance would be switched over to government insurance. The only purpose of all of this seems to be to turn children's health insurance into an outright entitlement — part of the Democrat's broader push to move all of America's health-care industry under government control. Along with expanding SCHIP coverage to include people higher and higher up in the middle class, the Democrats' bill would also give states incentives to sign up aggressively new "clients," by loosening requirements to join the program and encouraging states to market the program (anyone who rides the New York City subway knows how active the Empire State is already being on this front). How is all of this to be funded? Well, the bill would impose a 61-cent increase in the 39-cent a pack federal cigarette tax, bringing it up to an even dollar. We've written before on how corrupt is the government's interest in the cigarette business. It turns out that the government needs to keep people smoking; the Heritage Foundation estimates the government would need to sign up some 22 million more Americans to take up smoking by 2017 to fund this increase in SCHIP. To add to the irony, most smokers are low-income Americans, meaning that the poor essentially will be funding the health insurance of the middle class. Mr. Bush would be right to veto it while working to increase access to private insurance through tax breaks and deregulation. **************************** So, it would appear to me that the major problems some have against it are: it will shift children who are now covered by private insurance onto a program unncessarily; it will allow for more adults on the program, something that was never intended; that paying for it with a tobacco tax targets the very people who need the assistance, the lower income families as statistically that is where the most smokers are...essentially shifting the burden for adding middle class families to the lower income families...and I think we can all agree that is not a good thing. In my research I also found something VERY interesting... I am sorry to say I did not know the particulars of the President's proposal regarding insuring children...only his proposal extends to everyone, not just children...sure have not seen the media report it.... Opposing view: President's plan is better Extend SCHIP program without spending billions to expand it. By Mike Leavitt We all want to see every American insured, and President Bush has proposed a plan to see that everyone is. Congress, instead, is pushing a massive expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that grows government without helping nearly as many children. The president's plan, announced last January, would fix our discriminatory tax policy so that every American family received a $15,000 tax break for purchasing health insurance. If Congress acted on the president's plan, nearly 20 million more Americans would have health insurance, according to the independent Lewin Group. In contrast, Democrats in Congress would more than double government spending on SCHIP and extend the program to families earning as much as $83,000 a year. But their plan would add fewer than 3 million children to SCHIP, and many of the newly eligible children already have private insurance. So instead of insuring nearly 20 million more Americans privately, Congress would spend billions of dollars to move middle-income Americans off private insurance and onto public assistance. The Democrats' plan has other problems. It would fund SCHIP's expansion with a gimmick that hides its true cost. It would allocate billions of dollars more than is needed to cover eligible kids. And it would allow states to continue diverting SCHIP money from children to adults. This is a boon for the states but costs the federal government more. Ideology is really behind the Democrats' plan. They trust government more than the free choices of American consumers. Some in Congress want the federal government to pay for everyone's health care, and expanding SCHIP is a step in that direction. SCHIP is part of the fix for low-income children, and Congress should put politics aside and send the president a clean, temporary extension of the current program. Expanding SCHIP is not the only way or the best way to insure the uninsured. The president's plan is better. It would benefit many more Americans. It would focus SCHIP on the children who need help most. And it would move us more sensibly toward our common goal of every American insured. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think a $15,000 tax break would help more American families afford health insurance, thereby covering more kids AND adults, which is the goal, right? And no raising of taxes or targeting the lower income families with a tobacco tax...sounds like a win-win. I don't care if it is Bush's idea or the Democratic Congress' idea...it is a good idea. This time it happened to be Bush's. Just my take on it. If you want to find the articles, just put *expanding SCHIP* in a Google search. I read several articles in support of both sides. I did not see much about the income leveling, except in one article, which did mention that New York had a "sliding scale." It did not define it, but I am thinking it is at the purview of the states, and if New York did it others probably could too? Record gas prices/Exxon profits at all time high. sm You are the one who tried to make this windfall tax profit thing an issue. Over the past few days, your posts accusing Obama of being a Marxist/socialist black liberationist theologian have been effectively challenged by alternative viewpoints of "windfall tax," "rebate," and "black liberation theology." The right-wingers and media are constantly pushing for "immediate/emergency" relief from the high price of gas. We debate the pros and cons of McCain's tax holiday/offshore drilling versus Obama's tax rebate funded by an "emergency" excise tax and his other longer-term initiatives, particularly in view of the fact that in a time when we are paying record-shattering prices for gas, Exxon is posting record-shattering profits. There is nothing evil about recognizing that there is something wrong with this picture and that the oil companies should bear some responsibility in the consequences we all pay for their greed. Rebate coupons, schemes and incentives are as American as apple pie. We are forced to stuff their pockets with these obscene profits in the absence of price regulation. It is not too much to ask that they come out from behind their curtain of corruption once in a blue moon and show some appreciation to the consumers whose hard-earned money "trickles up" to the wealthiest among us. BTW, the CEOs did exactly what to earn this "windfall?" Maybe you are not feeling the same pinch the rest of us are dealing with. When some of our fellow citizens are making decisions between paying for their obscenely priced medications versus their obscenely priced food versus their obscenely priced housing versus their obscenely priced gas with their stagnant wages, or worse still, their unemployment checks because their jobs are the latest ones to bite the dust and be shipped overseas and the $60 that it takes to fill their tanks to make a thorough job search is prolonging their misery and that of their families, it is reasonable that we might consider all the possible alternatives to address this problem. An energy rebate is a good idea for those of us who are not bent on bashing Obama 24/7 and I suspect most of us could care less where it is coming from. |
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