Hospital visitation rights for everyone? (updated)
Appropriately for National Healthcare Decisions Day, today’s big news is that President Obama issued an executive order instructing hospitals that participate in Medicare or Medicaid to make
clear that designated visitors, including individuals designated by legally valid advance directives (such as durable powers of attorney and health care proxies), should enjoy visitation privileges that are no more restrictive than those that immediate family members enjoy. [And] that participating hospitals may not deny visitation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
Wait, where’s marital / relationship status? Does Obama really mean to say that a close friend or unmarried partner can be kept from a patient’s bedside, if the patient hasn’t completed a legal advance directive (or otherwise designated that person in advance) and as long as the hospital can prove the exclusion wasn’t motivated by race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability?
Have you or anyone you know been kept from visiting a loved one in the hospital because of martial status? Your story must be told! Click here to send your story confidentially to AtMP, or post it for the public to read in the comments section below.
NEW! Read AtMP’s comments on the regulation, and add your support!
April 17th, 2010 at 2:50 am
[...] are single – regardless of their sexual orientation or anything else. (See also this post to the Alternatives to Marriage Project blog.) It is not enough simply to add more couples to the list of people who qualify for such basic [...]
April 17th, 2010 at 9:51 am
This could be settled by simply letting patients allow any or all visitors during a hospital stay.
April 17th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
I’m single. I ought to have visitation rights for hospital visits to dear ones as well.
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:28 pm
My sisters and SO of ten years, were admitted to my bedside, but, in one emergency room, the question they asked (what relationship do you have with your SO, Nancy?) was answered by me as “We own property together!” Our 1993 Ford F150, and a small house!
Why should it matter to them? Does someone who is in a medical emergency have to have some kind of government “license” to love others, who need to be comforted?
We are both disabled, retired military veterans, and if we were to marry, our combined incomes would negate some of our medical treatment from the VA!
Our combined retirements don’t leave any “wealth” after the bare necessities of modest quarters, utilities, medicines, treatments the VA prescribes, but, cannot provide, and our food!
How unfair is that? Then, for us to visit each other during medical emergencies, we have to disclose that we are loving partners, but, like the other 52% of all heterosexual couples in America, we see many valid reasons that we cannot get the government taxation marriage license!
We “Hetero” couples really need equal treatment, or fairness, like, the “GAY RIGHTS” everyone seems to be talking about in the media!