Death gets more expensive in King County
SEATTLE - They say two things are certain, death and taxes. But some families feel like the two go hand in hand because of a new rule at the King County Medical Examiner’s office.
Lisa Lane remembers her mother as a strong woman who lived life to the fullest.
"A really vibrant bright woman who did everything she wanted to do," says Lane.
She says her mother used to smoke and she developed Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (C.O.P.D). Lane cared for her for three years until her mother died just before Christmas.
"I touched her arm and the heat just left her body. Just like that it was amazing," Lane says.
But the chill really set in when Lane noticed a King County Medical Examiners permit fee at the bottom of the funeral home invoice.
"It made me mad. I felt like it was sneaky, kind of," says Lane. "I never heard of it before."
The county's medical examiner instituted the fee for cremations three years ago, and in 2011 included the fee for burials as well. It pays for a review of every death in the county.
"There is not any of this money going into the Medical Examiners budget or the county coffers," says Gareth Johnson, Prevention Division manager for the county’s Department of Public Health. "It's being used only to cover the costs of conducting this review."
"I can only use that money to conduct a quality review of every death in the county to make sure we know why people died," says Johnson.
"King county is the only county that is doing this for both cremation and burial," says John Eric Rolfstad, executive director of the People's Memorial Association. "It's the only jurisdiction in the country that is doing this for deaths."
Rolfstad claims reviewing every death is unnecessary.
"If a person is 85 years old and dies of lung cancer on hospice, does the county need to look any further into this death?" he asks.
"Part of the problem is that taxpayers in this state don't like taxes, so we get fee'ed to death, literally," says Rolfstad.
Lane had no choice to pay the fee. Otherwise she couldn't lay her mom to rest.
"It just doesn't seem right," she says.
The county says the new fee will not only pay for a review of every death, but allow them to add more death investigators and pathologists for the process. The increase in staff will expedite the time it takes for them to determine cause of death.