Posted on 04/16/2010 3:37:33 AM PDT by tobyhill
President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients' choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans.
The president directed the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation in a memo that was e-mailed to reporters Thursday night while he was at a fundraiser in Miami.
Administration officials and gay activists, who have been quietly working together on the issue, said the new rule will affect any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding, a move that covers the vast majority of the nation's health-care institutions. Obama's order will start a rule-making process at HHS that could take several months, officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Hospitals are first concerned with the patient, not the sexual orientation. Good grief!
He’s now just skipping the legislative process (or what was left of it) and issuing outright dictates. What a POS.
It must be nice to be a dictator.
I wonder if anyone will ask him what gives him the authority to do this?
He is the President of the United States, the chief administrator of the federal government, but that does not mean he can order people, or businesses or organizations to do what he wants. If it did, why have a Congress?
“”The General Accounting Office has identified 1,138 instances in federal law where marriage is important,” said one gay rights activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity before the White House formally announced the directive. “We’ve knocked off one of them.””
Yes, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t you queer ba$tard. Destroy society.
King Obama!!! All bow down
This guy is a train wreck.
he can pretty much tell any US government office to do whatever and they have to comply. I have worked in plenty of private sector hospitals and I have never seen gay folks discriminated against in any way. This, like his nuclear “treaty” is much ado about nothing so he can claim he has done something besides presideover a year of record unemployment and foreclosures.
Can a hospital drop Medicare?? I don’t see how...age discrimination...and hospital emergency rooms say they will turn no one away...
False issue to emphasize “victim” status of gays. When our first child was born, My name badge in the delivery room proudly proclaimed “father.” By the time our last was born, I’d been down-graded to “support person, “ and that was already a long time before Obama. I guess it’s aimed a Catholic Hospitals,but will it apply when Moslems open their first U.S. hospital?
Seems like a petty issue for the President to be involved in.
AFAIK, this has been an accepted and settled 'question' for a long time.
A dime is thicker than zero's depth
Call me ignorant but was there some reason they couldn't visit before ? Why does O have to once again micro-manage life from the oval office ?
“I wonder if anyone will ask him what gives him the authority to do this?”
This is just one more of literally thousands of rules the Feds have imposed on hospitals that receive Medicare. As per the “golden rule,” Uncle Sam dispenses the Medicare gold and therefore gets to make whatever rules it wants as a condition of being on the receiving end of federal largesse.
Of course, by the same principle, Uncle Sam could decide that anyone benefiting from a tax subsidy for health insurance—which includes everyone with employer-provided health coverage (and once health reform is operational, also will extend to many with individual health coverage—should have to dance to Uncle Sam’s tune. We can imagine rules related to smoking, diet, exercise etc. all on grounds that such rules are “reasonable” in light of the federal assistance being given.
I see a whole lot of Drama Queen scenarios about to happen.
This is a PR joke. I don’t know of ANY hospital who would turn away a “gay” partner.
I’m as homophobic as they come (and PROUD of it) but even I would not deny two people who “love and care” for each other entrance to a hospital room if one of them was very ill.
PLEEEEEEZZZZE !
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