good call, and about time
Over the weekend, President Obama sent the directive down to the HHS department to come up with new rules to extend hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners (or, for that matter, whoever the patient dicates). The new rules, spelled out here, once implemented, would apply to any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding (that would be most of them).
This is the kind of thing that one would think would be a no-brainer; however, it isn’t; some hospitals, have, in the past, have barred visits by same-sex partners (see paragraph nine in this piece) who’ve taken the extra legal step of having medical power of attorney documents drawn up (an extra step that wouldn’t be necessary, if states allowed these couples to, y’know, get married or something).
In a way it makes me really sad that people (be they not only gay, but widowed w/o kids, or a member of a celebate religious order, if I understand the directive correctly, and I’m pretty sure I do – read the memorandum) can’t, as a matter of course, have their chosen loved ones, partners, or families present with them in these situations, even if they aren’t granted a specific title in a narrowly-defined legal manner. However, I’m not going to let the general messed-upednes of American society as a whole tarnish the fact that I’m glad this particular problem is finally getting fixed.
