While the House GOP drones on about the unconstitutional Affordable Care Act, there's good news on the healthcare front. New hospital visitation regulations went into effect yesterday, requiring that hospitals which receive Medicare and Medicaid funding cannot deny visitation privileges for patients based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Now patients will be allowed to decide both visitation rights and who will be able to make medical decisions their behalf.
The new regulation was, in part, inspired by the story of Janiece Lagbehn, "who was barred from her partner Lisa Pond's bedside at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami for eight hours after she suffered an aneurysm in 2007."
"Other couples, no matter how they define themselves as families, won't have to go through what we went through, and I am grateful," she said. "But the fact that the hospital didn't let our children say goodbye to their mom... That's just something that will haunt me forever."
Langbehn, 41, had raised three adopted teenage children with Pond, her partner of nearly 18 years. At the start of a cruise vacation to the Bahamas, Pond collapsed suddenly and unexpectedly and later died at the hospital.
The couple's story, and forced separation during Pond's dying hours, inspired Obama to pursue a change to government regulations.
Four states, North Carolina, Delaware, Nebraska and Minnesota, have taken steps already to allow patients to have more control over these very basic decisions--who is allowed to see them and help make critical care decisions. Now that will be true for the entire country.