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By Amanda Carpenter

Assisted suicide

Montana is the latest battleground in the fight over physician-assisted suicide and some worry, as more states make it legal, about the problems that may arise if it becomes an acceptable medical option.

Montana's Supreme Court judges are examining a case brought by former truck driver Robert Baxter, who suffered from lymphocytic leukemia and wanted the courts to grant terminally ill patients the right to obtain life-ending drugs from their doctor. A district court ruled in his favor, but Mr. Baxter died of his disease hours before the court handed down its ruling.

The state Supreme Court is now taking up an appeal to Baxter v. Montana. If the high court upholds the lower court ruling, Montana will become the third state in the nation to legalize assisted suicide, following Oregon and Washington.

Dr. Mark Mostert, adviser to the United Nations and director of the Institute for Disability and Bioethics at Regent University, is concerned what could happen if more states follow suit. If assisted suicide is recognized as a legal medical option, he says, people may start using it to avoid providing costly end-of-life care or other expensive medical treatments.

"We only have finite resources to serve people in this country, we will never have enough to give everybody everything, so the question is how do we allocate resources and why," he said. "It's easy to imagine people will be tempted to push for assisted suicide as medical intervention and a way of saving money. I don't think it's some kind of sinister conspiracy to say that once you have that in place, and limited resources, the temptations will come."

AARP competitor

A conservative alternative to the AARP has seen a spike in membership over the past month that it says is due to concerns about AARP's position on President Obama's favored health care reforms.

The American Seniors Association has aggressively sought to flip AARP members to their group. It's running a promotion now to give new members a two-year membership for the price of one if a ripped-up AARP card is submitted with the application. And ASA is happy with the results so far. Since running the promotion, which started in August, they've gained 12,000 new members.