[extropy-chat] Moveon.org

[Brent Neal]

 (9/17/04 19:16) Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:

>--- Brent Neal <brentn at freeshell.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Sorry, you're incorrect. I have heard of PoA, since my father is an A
>> and I hold one for both him and my mother: a health care PoA. If I
>> were not their son, the PoA would let me tell the doctor what to do,
>> but it would not compel the doctor or the hospital administrators to
>> let me in the room. As I had already stated. Go to law school, then
>> come back and talk.
>
>Really, now, and how would you be fully informed to tell the doctor
>what to do unless you could confer with your client??? I've been
>through it, in fact, in the last year, as my mother spent a month and a
>half in a drug induced coma while she was swollen up like jabba the
>hutt with 30 liters of fluid to keep her blood pressure up enough to
>stay alive, while her organs recovered from system wide peritonitis and
>the removal of most of her intestines. Do you really want to joust with
>me over this?

Wow, Mike. Did you really think that a sufficiently graphic description would disguise the fact that the patient in question was your mother and not your partner?  The former is not a problem, the latter would have been. And your health care PoA could not -compel- the doctor to let you in with your partner if your doctor felt that his or her diagnosis was enough to 'fully inform' you. Your only recourse would be to get a 2nd opinion from another doctor.

And though I'm not sure about this, I think that part of the problem are the new HIPPA regulations.

B
-- 
Brent Neal
Geek of all Trades
http://brentn.freeshell.org

"Specialization is for insects" -- Robert A. Heinlein