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Politics : A US National Health Care System?
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To: Lane3 who wrote (16956)4/17/2010 9:44:40 AM
From: Lane31 Recommendation  Read Replies (3) of 42652
 
The Power of Federal Funding
from Jeffrey Miron by Jeffrey Miron

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.

The concern this story raises is not the visitation rights for partners of gay men and women; I share President Obama’s discomfort with current practice, and I would like to see hospitals change their policies.

But I find it frightening that a president can, at the stroke of a pen, dictate policy at practically every hospital in the country. This is possible because of federal funding of health care via Medicaid and Medicare.

Once this power exists, it can be exercised in ways that supporters of the President’s recent decision might not like. What, for example, prevents a future president from decreeing that hospitals with federal funding cannot provide abortions?

jeffreymiron.com
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