Around this time last year, California passed an assisted suicide law, SB 128, which went into effect this past June. Proponents of the law claimed it allowed terminally ill patients to die with dignity.

Most notably, the assisted suicide of cancer patient Brittany Maynard in Oregon last year created international debate over whether lethal medication presented the best option for these patients.

Ever since the passage of the assisted suicide law in California, [a young mother] has had to battle her insurance company to get the coverage she needs to survive.

Advocates for the law maintained there were enough safeguards to protect people and that it would have no effect on those who wanted to choose life instead of death.

Stephanie Packer, a 33-year-old California resident and mother of four children, says otherwise. Doctors diagnosed Packer with a scleroderma, a chronic autoimmune disease that will slowly turn her lungs to scar tissue. She learned about her disease in 2012, and physicians initially believed she had only three years to live.

It has been more than four years, and Packer says she’s doing everything she can to get more time with her children.

But ever since the passage of the assisted suicide law in California, Packer has had to battle her insurance company to get the coverage she needs to survive. Last year, her doctors wanted to switch her chemotherapy treatments to a less toxic infusion that would further extend her life.

Her insurance company twiddled its thumbs for a while and then said they would cover the medication after they “[fixed] a couple of things.”

Then the law passed — and Packer received a letter saying they had rejected her request for coverage.

Related: Suicide Attempt Is Foiled by Prayer

“The letter didn’t say anything about physician-assisted suicide,” Packer said in a video for The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. She called the insurance company, and they gave her a long, vague story about why they couldn’t pay for her treatments. Then she asked about the lethal medicine covered under the new law.

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“Yes, we do provide that to our patients, and you would only have to pay $1.20 for the medication,” the insurance agent told her.

When laws allowing physician-assisted suicide pass, insurance companies are more likely to deny treatments that could extend — but not necessarily save — the lives of terminally ill patients.

“It was like someone hit me in the gut,” Packer said in her video. “In front of me, I had this validation that all my fears were correct.”

The nonprofit Compassion and Choices has been an active champion for assisted suicide. On its site, the group discloses financial statements for each fiscal year, but it doesn’t name donors. Insurance companies have to pay roughly $100 for a round of lethal medication; a chemotherapy treatment costs more than $3,000.

When laws are passed that allow physician-assisted suicide (PAS), insurance companies are more likely to deny treatments that could extend — but not necessarily save — the lives of terminally ill patients such as Packer. Laws like these are “going to kill patients because they’re not going to get the treatments they need to save their life,” Packer said.

[lz_bulleted_list title=”Assisted Suicide Laws” source=”http://www.elrc.com”]Legal in California, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington|Nine other states have PAS legislation pending|Person must be diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months|Even in states where it is legal, there is not much demand for PA.[/lz_bulleted_list]

She added, “Patients fighting for a longer life end up getting denied treatment because [suicide] will always be the cheapest option. End-of-life care is the most expensive care. But giving people the chance to kill themselves tells them that they are not worthy of fighting to live.”

Compassion and Choices raked in close to $20 million in 2014 — $16 million of which came from donor contributions. The group does not disclose a list of donors, but it’s safe to say insurance companies could profit in a big way from passing assisted suicide laws.

After the California law passed, the conversations in her support groups changed dramatically, said Packer. Patients who were already struggling to live longer felt even more discouraged and considered giving up.

“We don’t hand a gun to someone who’s suffering from depression,” she writes on her website, Stephanie’s Journey. “So we shouldn’t give the dying a handy tool to end their lives. It’s important instead to give terminally ill patients the tools to live. There is beauty in their lives, perhaps more even than before their diagnoses. You see life differently when death is imminent.”

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Assisted suicide is an increasing problem in the United States and elsewhere. Voters have legalized it in five states now, and 2,281 patients have requested prescriptions from their doctors in recent years. Packer believes that many of these people felt coerced into the choice to die because they had a physician who lacked compassion or who didn’t understand the resources available to terminally ill patients.

Related: Guess Who’s Most at Risk for Suicide

Packer participates in support groups that provide housing, palliative care, and meals to people in her situation. If companies stopped pouring money into killing these people off, there would be more than enough resources to care for those in need, she says bluntly on her website.

“People [could] start to live instead of feeling like they have to choose to die.”