Terminally ill patients in California can seek aid-in-dying beginning June 9

A state law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last year to ease the pain suffered by terminal patients has been hung up in a legislative limbo after it was approved by the state Legislature in a special session on health care. Bills approved in special sessions go into effect 90 days after the special session is adjourned by the Legislature, but state lawmakers kept the special session open as they continued to negotiate a tax on the health care industry to pay for Medi-Cal and while looking to pass six tobacco-control bills. Lawmakers approved the tax on managed care organizations last week and on Thursday gave final approval to the tobacco-related bills. “In the intervening days since the governor signed the bill, our offices have received a lot of calls from families and terminally ill patients wanting to know when the law would become effective,” said Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, who authored the bill with Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, and Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis. Before being prescribed a lethal dose of drugs, two California physicians would have to agree that a mentally competent person has six months or less to live. Efforts to legalize aid-in-dying were buoyed in 2014 when Brittany Maynard talked openly and publicly about her decision to move from her East Bay home in Alamo to Portland, Ore. to access a lethal prescription that she ultimately used. “It’s crazy to me that other patients suffering with terminal illness don’t have the same choice and may not have the same flexibility to pick up and move with their family,” Maynard told The Chronicle before she died Nov. 1.