Presidential Memo Expands Non-Family Members' Visitation and Surrogate Health Care Rights

The President yesterday issued a Memorandum (full text) to the Secretary of Health and Human Services aimed at assuring that hospital patients have the right to designate visitors and surrogate decision-makers other than immediate relatives. While the action is aimed primarily at problems faced by gays and lesbians, the President framed the issue in broader terms:

Often, a widow or widower with no children is denied the support and comfort of a good friend. Members of religious orders are sometimes unable to choose someone other than an immediate family member to visit them and make medical decisions on their behalf. Also uniquely affected are gay and lesbian Americans who 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.

The Memorandum calls both for new rule making and for enforcement of current protections. New rules must also bar hospitals participating in Medicare and Medicaid from denying visitation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. The Memorandum gives HHS six months to develop further recommendations on health care issues that affect LGBT patients and their families. The Washington Post reported on the President's action.