By Stephanie O'Neill, Kaiser Health News*

John Minor was one of about 500 Californians to be prescribed lethal medication under the state’s aid-in-dying law. Minor is pictured with his daughter Valerie Minor Johnson on Sept. 15, 2016 — the day he ended his life. (Photo courtesy of the Minor family.)

John Minor of Manhattan Beach epitomized the active Californian. The retired psychologist was a distance runner, a cyclist and an avid outdoorsman, says his daughter Jackie Minor of San Mateo.

"He and my mom were both members of the Sierra Club," Jackie said. "They went on tons of backpacking trips — climbing mountains and trekking through the desert. He was just a very active person."

But in September 2014, he fell ill with terminal pulmonary fibrosis — a lung disease that his family says slowly eroded his quality of life.

Two years after that diagnosis, last September 15, John Minor, surrounded by his family, sipped his last drink: apple juice laced with a lethal dose of medication his doctor had prescribed for him. He was 80.

"He laid down and went to sleep and he was in a coma for about two hours and then he — passed," Jackie said. "It was very peaceful."

The organization reports that nearly 500 hospitals and health systems and more than 100 hospice organizations allow aid-in-dying to be offered to their patients and 80 percent of insurers statewide cover expenses related to it. The California law created a process for dying patients to ask their doctors for a lethal prescription that they can then take privately, at home.

"What the numbers are showing is that the law is working incredibly well," said Matt Whitaker, the organization's point person for California and Oregon which both have aid-in-dying laws. "That it’s working as the lawmakers intended." 

Still, for some patients, finding a doctor willing to prescribe the life-ending drugs can be difficult, in part because the law allows doctors to opt out of prescribing – even when the hospital where they work has agreed to participate in assisting patients.

"It's a very nuanced decision," said Dr. Elizabeth Dzeng, an assistant professor of hospital medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where, she estimates, about three dozen patients have made the request so far. Dzeng said the decision to prescribe doesn't come easy for many doctors.

"Even if they're in support of aid-in-dying they don't necessarily want to be the person identified as the go-to person for aid-in-dying because that's a very different implication," she said.

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