[AndrewC]

Oh, but it's so much more than that

No it's pretty simple. "right to counsel" just like "right to privacy". What you want is to assign no meaning to the words "right to counsel" since you stipulate that only applies to an explicit provision in the law. The words "right to counsel" are unnecessary to you.

[general_re]

Ummm, no, what you appear to want is to take a right available during a specific proceeding and turn it into a universal and perpetual right. I've gotta tell ya, if, God forbid, something happened to my wife or child, you're suggesting that some complete stranger is going to come into our lives and tell me what my wife wants, what's best for my child. I wouldn't stand for it, nobody will stand for it, and I have serious doubts that you're bananas enough to find it acceptable in your own family life, particularly when faced with such incredibly personal decisions as what to do with an incapacitated loved one. I don't believe it for a minute, and the instant your plan gets cast in those terms, any support for it is going to disappear like smoke in the wind. Your cure is far, far worse than the disease.