As reported here, 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.
Now much analysis of the moral issue here will take place, but there is another, more immediate teachable moment that has to do with process, rather than morals.
And here is where that teachable moment comes in; 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.
See how that works? By virture of the fact that any hospital or other institution takes Medicare or Medicaid dollars, that institution is subject to the Law that Obama just uttered!
If you grasp the nugget here, then you begin to understand the power of ObamaCare. When nearly all the people of this country are swept into a Government singl-payer plan, the President, at his whim, can create a new law that magically and instantly affects your life.
How's that Hope and Changey thing working for you?
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