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.

[heye2monn]

So this doesn’t really hurt the Catholic hospitals? How do conservative Catholics feel about this decision? (Just curious)

[goat granny]

I don't have the foggiest idea how others feel. There is no questionnaire you have to make out to visit a patient. Unless your running up and down the halls yelling I am homosexual then you might be asked to leave cause your making a nuisance of yourself and disturbing other patients. In hospital politics doesn't come into patient care...

I have had doctors wives as patients along with 300 dollar a day junkies...(doctors wives are not as easy as the junkies sometimes)

[heye2monn]

I just read an interesting comment by a spokesman for the Famiy Research Council, the conservative group. He said that this decision by Obama shows that the federal government is intruding further into the smallest decisions in our health care system.

Excellent point, and a harbinger of the socialized medicine to come.

[goat granny]

Homosexual visits really is nothing, what the government wants is for them to perform abortions and at that point most if not all will close down..

[djf]

So, basically what he is revealing is that any hospital/clinic/dentist/whatever that accepts federal dollars is a branch of the federal government.

[heye2monn]

Of course.

Abortions, the sacred rite of liberals, must be performed in every place that is under federal control.