Death As a Salesman: What's Wrong With Assisted Suicide
by Brian P. Johnston

Johnston tells several stories about the pro-suicide movement: the story of the Hemlock Society and its founder, Derek Humphry... Jack Kevorkian, whom he skewers with his own words... the Dutch experiment documented exhaustively, clearly something we wouldn't want to try.... the threat of manipulating older people, perhaps for their money, perhaps because we're just tired of hearing them chatter, is in fact very real.

Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices
by Gail-Grenier Sweet

Ms. Sweet explains how the early feminists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton not only opposed abortion but staunchly opposed it. This book is a collection of various feminist writers who explain how a mother killing her unborn child isn't acting in true feminist spirit.

Health Care

A Problem of Too Much Government

The chief problem with the medical system today is not that government is not involved enough, but that it is too involved. From government power used to enforce medical monopolies, to bureaucratic FDA regulations inflating drug prices, to laws prohibiting self-medication, even under circumstances where the patient knows his own medical needs, forced scarcity and inefficiency have caused medical costs to skyrocket.

I call for an immediate end to this medical monopoly. I call for revoking all laws which prevent self-medication, and the reworking of laws which outlaw non-surgical medical practice except if endorsed by a private association. Other health professionals, such as nurses, are well equipped to handle many routine procedures, and pharmacists are often more qualified than doctors to counsel patients on medications. I advocate that no medicine be federally or locally banned unless demonstrable negative and adverse effects to the patient beyond any measure of help the drug provides can be proven. The only laws which should be in effect here are laws made for the benefit for public safety. It is amazing that often innocent yet competent practioners are persecuted under the laws, while quacks with medical degrees who are injuring and sometimes assaulting patients routinely escape government scrutiny and are sometimes even shielded by state lawsand boards.

The Solution to High Drug Prices

High drug prices would not be a problem if the FDA were stripped of most of its pre-approval power: the FDA should exist only to safeguard against fraud or drugs discovered to be dangerous to human beings in their prescribed doses. Most drugs available in the U.S. are available in Mexico at a fraction of the cost, often the identical products. A free market in drugs would balance out this price inequity very quickly.

There have been plans to place price controls on medicines. Price controls never work, and they will not work to lower drug prices. I oppose them in all instances.

Medical Savings Accounts

Medical savings accounts are a good idea, because they would reintroduce choice and market forces into medical decisions. An MSA could be offered as either a tax credit, and to low income individuals, an outright grant, which would offer more choices to the poor in their medical care. It could be more beneficial than the current MediCal system, which limits choices to the poor since physicians tend to eschew the system.

Restructure tax policy

As a second consumer-based reform, taxes should be restructured to establish equity in the treatment of employer-provided health insurance, individually purchased health insurance, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. All health care expenditures should be 100% tax deductible. This will add a measure of fairness to current tax policies that penalize the self-employed, part-time workers, and employees of small businesses, while subsidizing health care for the most affluent in our society.

Deregulate the health care industry

There should be a thorough examination of the extent to which government policies are responsible for rising health costs and the unavailability of health care services. America can help lower health care costs and expand health care access by taking immediate steps to deregulate the health care industry, including elimination of mandated benefits, repeal of the Certificate-of-Need program, and expansion of the scope of practice for non-physician health professionals.

Opposed to Nationalization

I will never support a single-payer system. It is nationalization of the medical profession, and it would destroy our fine medical system, which is based on competition. Additionally, such a concept is wholly against civil liberties. The answer to the medical care crisis is to figure how to extend that competition to the poor, not inflict the system that the poor are enslaved to on everyone else.

Legal Marijuana and the Drug War

The people of California and Arizona recently voted to allow marijuana to be prescribed for medical purposes. The federal government should respect the desires of the states and the people and get out of the marijuana criminalization business as well as out of the drug war. In connected position papers, I have stated that the role of governments in the Drug War should be changed to emphasis treatment of the addict, and that more money should go to that, while markedly less goes to interdiction. Also, I would immediately cease the warehousing of users and addicts in prisons and jails when they have committed no other crimes.

Medicare/Medicaid

I propose that the entire concept of Medicare and Medicaid programs such as MediCal, be altered: I believe MediCal should get out of the provider business entirely, turn those functions over to private hospitals and HMO's, and act only as a financial guarantor of medical care to those who otherwise could not afford it. Furthermore, I do not believe that citizens should have to attain poverty status before qualifying for medical care: in the case of expensive and necessary treatments, I believe MediCal qualification should be proportionally linked to the level of necessary medical care provided, and not linked solely to current income.

I would also like to see hospital clinics open their doors on special weekend days to provide preventive medical care to those in the community who could not afford it otherwise, and I would provide tax credits or grants that would enable this to happen. This is not a "government feelgood" concept: it is in reality a cost reduction project, as it is cheaper to engage in preventive health care than to ignore medical problems and treat them when they come to emergency status.

One of my concerns is that if not drastically altered and largely privatized, the MediCal and Medicare systems will be destroyed....the numbers say it will happen, and the numbers don't lie....and I believe the best way to preserve medical care for everyone is to hand off the direct care component to private concerns, letting the market act, and reserving the MediCal system as a financial guarantor to those entities. I believe more people would be served under such a system, and those people would be better served than they are currently under MediCal.

Maintain the Right to Sue

In no way will I ever support any measures which seek to deny a patient wronged the right to seek recompense through the courts: the rights of patients to sue their doctors and their Health Maintenance Organizations must be preserved.

Dangerous Legal Drugs

While I generally believe in the right to self medicate, when it comes to our children, of whom we are stewards, there are some alarming trends concerning prescription drugs. Namely, Ritalin and Lovox, which have been determined to be destabilization factors in the emotional health and stability of young people, and may indeed have influenced many of the recent spate of school shootings such as Columbine. Indeed, there is now a burgeoning illicit market in the sale and abuse of Ritalin and Lovox.

While I stand by the rights of adults to medicate themselves in the manner of their choosing, and do not want to conduct a drug war on adult use of Ritalin and Lovox, I advocate the immediate ban of prescription of Ritalin, Lovox and like substances to minors, given these dangers. We would not allow kids to smoke dope or shoot heroin legally: we should not allow these two mind altering substances anywhere near our children. Moreover, we cannot continue to effectively sell a "Say No To Drugs" message to our kids while continuing to medicate them for alleged unruliness.

Suicide and assisted suicide

I do not believe there should be laws against suicide. However, I do not believe that allowing others to assist in a suicide, or allowing someone to willfully and artificially terminate a patient's life can be allowed. I have great concern when others enter into a decision, or attempt in influence a decision, of any individual to commit suicide, or make a self-decision that this is what the patient "would have wanted". I have yet to see assisted suicide laws that adequately protects a patient's right not to be killed or protects a patient's right to change their mind.

See Abortion
See: The Drug War
Position Papers Index
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