Thursday, April 15, 2010
Obama's new rule on hospital visitation
Other than federalism concerns, is there any reason for Catholic legal theorists to object to President Obama's instruction to HHS to promulgate a rule requiring any hospital participating in Medicare or Medicaid to allow patients to designate hospital visitors, including same-sex partners? This strikes me as one area of longstanding concern to gays and lesbians that is (or should be) relatively uncontroversial -- i.e., does anyone oppose allowing patients to designate a hospital visitor of their choice, rather than categorically limiting visitors to immediate family members?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/04/obamas-new-rule-on-hospital-visitation.html
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the
comment feed
for this post.
Every state law I've ever looked at allows designation of anyone you want, and I'm not aware of anyone who has opposed that position. Where it gets tricky, as in all health care decision contexts, is where the person hasn't designated someone. State statutes usually have a list of default kinds of people for decision-making; the lists prioritize family members, sometimes they include non-related friends, but then someone (the hospital, a judge) is going to be making a judgment call about whether the unrelated person will be picked. This often occurs with opposite-sex fiancees.
But here's the flipside: now that federal law will even more fully enable access, will the so-called lack of hospital access for same-sex partners still be used as an argument requiring a change in the definition of marriage? If so, on what legitimate grounds?