It's. About. Time.

[hummingwolf]

The White House on Thursday released a statement by Obama instructing his Health and Human Services secretary to draft rules requiring hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments to grant all patients the right to designate people who can visit and consult with them at crucial moments.The designated visitors should have the same rights

Comments

[historychick49]

It's about damn time.

I'm glad to see, too, that not only is sexual orientation included, but also gender identity.

[hummingwolf]

That too.

I just... I cannot get my mind around the mentality of people who think that barring certain people from visiting hospital patients who want to see them is ever a good thing. People are already complaining, of course, that this is Obama "pandering to special interest groups"--but the thing is that everyone who will ever be in or ever care about someone in an American hospital is a member of that "special interest group".

[hasufin]

I think a good part of it is laziness - family gets visitation, nobody else, and no need to ever ask a patient's opinion on anything. There is, as I'm sure you're aware, a lot of inertia in the medical system.

PLus, of course, it's yet one more point where certain authoritarians can get their hackles up. After all, if you force people to be with their "real" families then they'll see the light, get back on the straight and narrow, and stop it with all this gay stuff or not talking to their bio-family or whatever and become all nice and traditional again.

Actually, most of what I've been seeing about this has been the typical commentary about how it's too little, and the Obama administration needs to go all the way with gay rights.

[flewellyn]

It is too little, and the Obama administration does need to go all the way with gay rights.

Still, it is a step.

[daisydumont]

that is good news!

[kitten_goddess]

I'm really glad Obama is doing this.

I am wondering how hospitals check visitors, though. I don't have much experience, but every time I've visited someone, I've always been able to get in, even when the person I'm visiting is not a relative. No one has ever asked me if I'm a relative.

[hummingwolf]

A lot depends on where the hospital is and how serious the person's condition is. I've never had trouble visiting people in regular hospital rooms, but when my parents were severely ill, visits were restricted to family. Even then, it wasn't too hard to bring in a non-family member--if I said the older woman with me was my aunt, nobody was going to research her background before letting her in. But there are cases, particularly when same-sex partners are involved, where people have been barred from hospital rooms even though the partners had drawn up all the legal protections they could. (Obama actually called the surviving partner in a Florida case to apologize to her for the way the hospital had treated the couple.)