Obama orders same-sex hospital visits (for hospitals accepting Medicare/Medicaid)

MSNBC ^ | 4/15/2010 | Michael D. Shear/wp

[tobyhill]

President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients' choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans.

The president directed the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation in a memo that was e-mailed to reporters Thursday night while he was at a fundraiser in Miami.

Administration officials and gay activists, who have been quietly working together on the issue, said the new rule will affect any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding, a move that covers the vast majority of the nation's health-care institutions. Obama's order will start a rule-making process at HHS that could take several months, officials said.

[pgyanke]

Hospitals are first concerned with the patient, not the sexual orientation.

Just like the schools are concerned about educating children?

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Now they have the extra burden of separating claims versus reality if someone is unable to verify.

I'm reminded of that Jeffrey Dahmer incident, where the teenage boy, naked and drugged, escaped from Dahmer and ran into the street. When a cop arrived, Dahmer claimed that the boy was his gay lover, whereupon the cop forcibly escorted the boy right back to Dahmer's apartment, where he was immediately killed.

[heye2monn]

Exactly correct. Religious hospitals are a big target of this rule. You get one thin dime of federal money and you have to obey all mandates of the socialist-secularist state.

[heye2monn]

Exactly correct. Religious hospitals are a big target of this rule. You get one thin dime of federal money and you have to obey all mandates of the socialist-secularist state.

[bert]

That’s ok, the hospitals can set up queer wards tp portect the nondeviant patients

[brwnsuga]

I have never seen anyone’s visitor turned away. It is always better that a patient’s love one is allowed to visit, it is actually better for healing. As a nurse, what do I care WHO is visiting as long as the patient has given permission for that person to be there?

[DJ Frisat]

"President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients' choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans."

In other news, the President offered that the sky is blue and the sun comes up in the east...

So what's new? He's suggesting that hospitals deny visitation by gay people? Nonsense.

As for making medical care decisions, that's as simple as a patient advocate form. I don't think it asks for sexual orientation on there...

This jerk will do anything to make himself look good. (too bad it's not working...)

[brwnsuga]

I believe that homosexuality is wrong, but as a health care provider I am supposed to give non-judgmental care to every patient. Yesterday, I took care of a patient that had just gotten out of jail after a 20 year sentence who was seeking treatment for erectile dysfunction..... It gave me pause, but I can’t scream “murderers don’t get Viagra!”

[tobyhill]

Visitation is not the problem, the problem is the Government forcing hospitals to give consent authorization to non-related non-married in most states the same rights as married people or blood relatives.

[brwnsuga]

I don’t believe a government mandate is necessary for this. No one would refuse a patients visitor anyway. The health care team is not their to take care of a patients morals, only their health.

[flib]

Hospitals don’t turn people away for pete’s sake. People shacking up also visit each other in the hospital.
As far as decisions; ANYONE can legally designate ANYONE to make decisions for them in the event of a medical emergency. It takes 20 minutes to get a power of attorney. (faster than getting married).

[linn37]

Obama is in lala land. Same sex couples have no trouble staying with their partners in the hospital where I work.

[jtal]

More and more hospitals will be dropping Medicare/Medicaid if Obama keeps this up.

Here's the real reason 0 was so eager to pass health care "reform." No hospital or doctor will be able to practice without some sort of federal involvement. So 0 can dictate policy to ALL physicians and hospitals.

[major-pelham]

I want to understand how Obama can “make” them write CFR rules ? Congress passes laws. Within them they dictate that the Exec Branch (via the agencies) promulgate rules to enforce those laws. In sum, Congress tells the Exec what rules to write and those rules must come from that Congressional authority - they can’t go beyond, they can’t make it up, etc. This reeks of the rule of man rather than law to me.

[Dallas59]

I didn’t know Hospitals threw out Gay people.../s

[tobyhill]

You are correct but now Obama is mandating that hospitals take care of peoples morals. There is a process now day that has worked for decades and for Obama to force hospitals to accept something that may not have before been a part of that process will disrupt the process.

Let's say a gay man is out of state and gets in a car wreck where he's in a coma. If there is no marriage who makes the decisions, relatives or partner?

[Above My Pay Grade]

I agree. While I’d like to see a law passed allowing individuals to decide who makes their medical decisions, and who gets to visit them in the hospital, (whather it is their spouse, friends, children, same sex lover or their auto mechanic) this should be done through legislation (which I imagine would pass easily) not by a Presidential order.

I think this is tactical mistake for the homosexualists. One of their big arguments for same sex marriage is hospital visitation. This change makes that a non-issue.

[Above My Pay Grade]

I would think (hope) that the next of kin and authorized visitors would need to be designated before the individual is in a coma, or otherwise unable to express his wishes.

[VastRWCon]

bill clinton: first black president.
barack obama: first gay president.

[maryz]

Call me ignorant but was there some reason they couldn't visit before?

I think the visitation thing is a non-issue. AFAIK, the only time visits are restricted to blood/marriage relatives is when a patient is in the ICU or something. But I've never heard of a verification requirement. In fact, when a friend of my sister's had a lung transplant and was in ICU for months, an old friend of hers from high school just told the hospital he was her brother (her husband was known to them! She was an only child, but I don't know if that would have been in her medical record). No one made him prove it. No one made my sisters and me prove we were relatives when we visited my father in the ICU.

The medical decision thing is different. Probably anyone who doesn't have a spouse (and even then assuming divorce isn't imminent!) should probably designate. I've seen cases reported where family members went to court over disagreement about care (remember Terri Schiavo!).