60 Minutes on Assisted Suicide

The most recent episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes featured a story about assisted suicide.

Here is how it began:

A young woman with brain cancer named Brittany Maynard made news recently when she spoke about her decision to end her life rather than succumb to the last ravages of her disease. Maynard moved to Oregon because it has a law that enables terminally ill people to obtain a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Whether doctors and caregivers should be allowed to help someone like Maynard hasten her own death is the subject of a long-running, state-by-state battle. Our story tonight is about a woman who was prosecuted for allegedly helping her 93-year-old father kill himself. Barbara Mancini lives in Pennsylvania, a state that does not have a law like Oregon’s. Her father was terminally ill and in pain and had repeatedly said he wanted to die. One morning while she was caring for him, Mancini says he asked her to hand him his bottle of morphine.

Barbara Mancini: He asked me to hand him the bottle and I did. I had the dosing syringe in my hand. He took the cap off and he drank what was remaining in the bottle. . . .

60 Minutes on Assisted Suicide

The most recent episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes featured a story about assisted suicide.

Here is how it began:

A young woman with brain cancer named Brittany Maynard made news recently when she spoke about her decision to end her life rather than succumb to the last ravages of her disease. Maynard moved to Oregon because it has a law that enables terminally ill people to obtain a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Whether doctors and caregivers should be allowed to help someone like Maynard hasten her own death is the subject of a long-running, state-by-state battle. Our story tonight is about a woman who was prosecuted for allegedly helping her 93-year-old father kill himself. Barbara Mancini lives in Pennsylvania, a state that does not have a law like Oregon’s. Her father was terminally ill and in pain and had repeatedly said he wanted to die. One morning while she was caring for him, Mancini says he asked her to hand him his bottle of morphine.

Barbara Mancini: He asked me to hand him the bottle and I did. I had the dosing syringe in my hand. He took the cap off and he drank what was remaining in the bottle. . . .

60 Minutes on Assisted Suicide

The most recent episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes featured a story about assisted suicide.

Here is how it began:

A young woman with brain cancer named Brittany Maynard made news recently when she spoke about her decision to end her life rather than succumb to the last ravages of her disease. Maynard moved to Oregon because it has a law that enables terminally ill people to obtain a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Whether doctors and caregivers should be allowed to help someone like Maynard hasten her own death is the subject of a long-running, state-by-state battle. Our story tonight is about a woman who was prosecuted for allegedly helping her 93-year-old father kill himself. Barbara Mancini lives in Pennsylvania, a state that does not have a law like Oregon’s. Her father was terminally ill and in pain and had repeatedly said he wanted to die. One morning while she was caring for him, Mancini says he asked her to hand him his bottle of morphine.

Barbara Mancini: He asked me to hand him the bottle and I did. I had the dosing syringe in my hand. He took the cap off and he drank what was remaining in the bottle. . . .

“The Cost of Cancer Drugs”

Recently, 60 Minutes ran a story about the inflated prices of new cancer drugs.

Here is how the segment began (from 60 Minutes website):

Cancer is so pervasive that it touches virtually every family in this country. More than one out of three Americans will be diagnosed with some form of it in their lifetime. And as anyone who’s been through it knows, the shock and anxiety of the diagnosis is followed by a second jolt: the high price of cancer drugs.

They are so astronomical that a growing number of patients can’t afford their co-pay, the percentage of their drug bill they have to pay out-of-pocket. This has led to a revolt against the drug companies led by some of the most prominent cancer doctors in the country

60 Minutes on Tax Fraud

Recently, 60 Minutes ran a story about prevalent IRS identity scam.

Here is a how the story began:

There have been lots of stories over the past few months on identity theft and how the information can be used against you. You may have heard something about stolen identity tax fraud. You may even have been a victim of it. It’s the biggest tax scam around now.

This is how it works. Someone steals your identity, files a bogus tax return in your name before you do and collects a refund check from the IRS. It’s so simple, you would think it would never work, but it does. It’s been around since 2008, and you’d think the IRS would have come up with a way to stop it, it hasn’t. Instead the scam has gone viral, tripling in the past three years.

The IRS estimates that it sent out nearly three million fraudulent refunds to con artists last year. And according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office out tomorrow, it cost tax payers $5.2 billion. The Treasury Department believes the numbers are much higher than that. Proving once again, what every con man already knows: there is no underestimating the general dysfunction and incompetence of government bureaucracy.