[Vision2020] Obama Orders Hospital Visitation Rights for Gays, Lesbians

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of CNN at:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/15/hospital.gay.visitation/index.html?hpt=T1

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Obama orders hospital visitation rights for gays, lesbians
By the CNN Wire Staff

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama has asked the Department of Health and
Human Services to establish a rule that would prevent hospitals from
denying visitation privileges to gay and lesbian partners.

The president's Thursday memo said, "There are few moments in our lives
that call for greater compassion and companionship than when a loved one
is admitted to the hospital. ... Yet every day, all across America,
patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their
sides."

Gay and lesbian Americans are "uniquely affected" by relatives-only
policies at hospitals, Obama said, adding that they "are often barred from
the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of
their lives -- unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to
act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated."

Obama requested that the regulation make clear that any hospital receiving
Medicare and Medicaid funding, which includes the vast majority of U.S.
hospitals, must allow patients to decide who can visit them and prohibit
discrimination based on a variety of characteristics, including sexual
orientation and gender identity.

Read the president's memorandum:

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/04/15/2010rightspatients.mem.final.rel.pdf

The president listed widows and widowers without children and members of
certain religious orders among those who suffer under the policy.

The memo was welcomed by gays and lesbians, who have used the restrictions
on hospital visitation as an argument in favor of same-sex marriage.

"In the absence of gay people being able to legally marry in most
jurisdictions, this is a step to rectify a gross inequity," said David
Smith, an executive at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay
rights group. "Because without gay marriage, much more inequities exist.
It should be applauded."

Smith said the organization had been working with the Obama administration
for months on the request, and that it was sparked by the case of a
Florida lesbian couple who were kept apart as one died from an aneurysm.
The rule would help hundreds of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender families, he said.

Obama's memo also requires the HHS regulations to guarantee hospitals
honor all patients' advance directives, which include stipulations such as
who should make health care decisions if the patient isn't able to do so.
The memo also directs the department to look into any other health care
barriers that pose challenges to such families and make recommendations to
the president on them within 180 days.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

“Well, I was 40. I was childless. I was single, divorced. And I figured
there's got to be one other way to really piss off my mother.”

– Carol Leifer on lesbianism