Drug company jacks up cost of aid-in-dying medication

When California's aid-in-dying law takes effect this June, terminally ill patients who decide to end their lives could be faced with a hefty bill for the lethal medication. It retails for more than $3,000. Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes Seconal, the drug most commonly used in physician-assisted suicide, doubled the drug's price last year, one month after California lawmakers proposed legalizing the practice. "It's just pharmaceutical company greed," said David Grube, a family doctor in Oregon, where physician-assisted death has been legal for 20 years.