Papers won't protect you, Little Faggot. This one really, really resonates with me, as I could be in a similar situation myself someday and I'm currently hip-deep in dealing with "the county" and eldercare for which I'm responsible. They are like sharks, the social workers, nurses, therapists... They're always watching you, waiting for a person to make a "mistake," so they can bring in their guns and rearrange your life. I'm in the clear so far, but I don't make the mistake of believing that we're safe. Any time they want to, for capricious or false reasons, reasons outside the purview of their professional responsibility even, they can do this. To anyone. Gay and str8.
Then there's the whole "well, if we had universal single payer like in England or France, none of this would've happened because the older guy would've gotten care in his home." But Obama doesn't want us to have that either. Fuck
him. Fuck his homophobe buddies and vampire squid health care execs. Gay rights and health care could have been the two signature accomplishments of a popular, progressive, modern "first black president's" administration, sealing his place in history with the greats. But no.... bombing kids in Afghanistan and signing off trillions to mismanaging banksters is what he wants to be remembered for. Fine, fuckface. That's your legacy. And I am one of the Resistance Historians who is going to document that.
OK, you can probably tell this story pissed me off a lot. Pass it on.
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Those are the features, CD
Where are the bugs?
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
But seriously
Obama just did somethingorother about domestic partnership healthcare rights, yes? What are the features and bugs? Anyone here hip on the details?
Details tbd...
from Izvestia:
As far as I know, you can already designate whomever you wish as your health care proxy, so that part would confer no new rights. It might (if one take an optimistic view) make hospitals relectant to blow off one's health care proxy, but that would depend on government enforcement. Much as I'd be thrilled to see a hospital/medical institution threatened with loss of Medicaid or Medicare reimbursement for denying someone's partner their rights to act as their health care proxy, does anyone think that's likely to happen? What would have real teeth is creation of a specific cause of action for being denied adherence to a health care proxy designation, but I don't think that can be created by EO, and somehow I don't see Obama going to Congress to ask for one.
What's new is the ability to designate who the hospital must allow in to see you -- so hospitals couldn't stand on family-only rules (or hide behind hostile family members insisting on family-only rules). But nothing is binding yet, Obama's EO only directs his regulators to come up with some rules in the next 6 months or so.
Because the problem is not that we have too little condescension from our tribe. -- okanogen
It's not even an EO
It's a memo to tell the agency to come up with rules.
Obama uses EOs to deny rights, not confer any.
Blue Lyon
See, gotta disagree with you here
"Much as I'd be thrilled to see a hospital/medical institution threatened with loss of Medicaid or Medicare reimbursement for denying someone's partner their rights to act as their health care proxy, does anyone think that's likely to happen?
What's more likely to happen, is that hospitals that feel their right to to hate is more important than their duty to care for the sick(I'm thinking Catholic run hospitals off the top of my head), will stop accepting Medicare/Medicaid.
In rural areas, where church run hospitals* are the only ones, this could put thousands of people's health care in jeopardy.
* My partner, the Sailor, was working in a rural church run hospital a few weeks ago, where they actually had a picture of Jesus in scrubs, working on a patient in a surgery room with doctors and nurses.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
hospitals are pretty dependent on medicare
we got medicare passed, complete with fairly strict desegregation regulations, back in 60s in large part because those racist hospitals down here in the south needed medicare's money, so they were willing to suck it up and integrate.
it's still fairly true today. i forget the exact numbers, but old people are the ones most likely to be hospitalized and medicare dollars pay for about half of all hospitalization spending in the country.
also, medicare pays a bit more to rural hospitals precisely because it's difficult to keep rural hospitals open and functioning.
He wrote a goddamn memo
to HHS telling them to come up with some rules. This process, of course, will probably take until he's safely out of office.
He's the freaking President of the United States - he could deal with this with an EO, just as he could end enforcement of DADT. That is, if he weren't a lying, unprincipled coward.
Oh. My. God.
I just don't get it. How does it happen that gay couples are so invisible to some people? Criminey, I'd die of a broken heart if someone separated me from my dog like that, much less my husband. Unfuckingbelievable.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
There's a good reason
"God's in the mix." http://www.correntewire.com/dick_cheney_doesnt_understand_gods_mix
Thx for this...
...inspired a rant.
As long as we hide behind the liberal capitalist state, because it offers up an occasional nod to social tolerances, we risk reaping the whirlwind.
These men get destroyed by a function of that state (because our social tolerances are not universal), and when blaming time comes, some time after oil goes from general use commodity to luxury, we pay the price as the "destroyers of the nation," because we advocated the abolition of repressive traditions.
I understand fully the arguments for gay marriage. Justice is no small consideration. But I sometimes wonder at the fall out from attaching all of our social justice wins to an economically and militarily murderous government.
"in their own best interests"
Chance are the forced separation and institutionalization were carried out by county level social workers who sincerely believed they were doing the Right and Moral thing.
Here we are in the 21st century and the greater part of 'Merika seems to want the 19th again.
The damned thing is, if there aren't some real changes soon, by the 22nd it's going to feel like the 18th for most.
I don't see any electoral process here that can avoid it.
As JFK said, those that make peacefully change impossible make violent change inevitable, but that seems part of the plan for hegemony, too.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Yes, I will pass along this story.
Talk about death panels. These supposed well-meaning social workers, hospital personnel and county clucks were making end of life decisions that were not theirs to make.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx
Where were the legal departments of the
hospital and the county? Well, absent someone who knew to complain to them, they were nowhere.
This is a problem not just for gay couples, but for anyone who has no other family who can or will make waves.
I couldn't get the link to open, but alternative
I couldn't get the bilerico link (first line CD post) to open, despite several tries. Kept coming up with "cannot load" or some such.
I googled around, and found something which also tells the story, and worked for me (I mean I could access it):
http://www.care2.com/causes/civil-rights...
It is really detailed, tho I don't know how it matches up with the original link.
Truly sickening.
The hospital, the county, anyone and eveyone
who ignored legal documents designed to determine who makes decisions for these men, ought to be sued to within an inch of their lives.
This is the equivalent of having one's Will ignored, and is so patently illegal it makes my blood pressure go sky-high.
Where was the attorney who drew the documents? Jesus, I work in this field, and the lawyers in my department prepare advance directives, Wills and powers of attorney every day for people with all kinds of relationships. I can imagine that if one of our clients ran into this situation, he or she would be on the phone to us in a NY minute and we would be in these people's faces so fast their tiny little heads would spin.
As for what Obama has graciously and beneficently decreed, doesn't anyone, of any race, color, creed, religion, or sexual orientation already have the unqualified right to determine who will speak for them, who can speak to the medical providers, who can be in the room, etc. Shame on him for acting as if he is doing something groundbreaking.
This IS the equivalent of having one's Will ignored
"who ignored legal documents designed to determine who makes decisions for these men, ought to be sued to within an inch of their lives.
This is the equivalent of having one's Will ignored, and is so patently illegal it makes my blood pressure go sky-high" ---Mine too. This is insanely illegal, as well as insanely cruel.
Even here in the Stupid State, the Bar Association wrote the Advanced Directives booklet to be iron-clad, and hospitals all pretty much press it on you. There's nothing in it that would allow that kind of horror to happen legally.
I hope Sonoma County gets its head handed to it, and has to pay out millions.
Elliot Lake