President Obama Mandates LGBT Rights to Hospital Visitation / Part One: Introduction and Background

There's a lot to say about this, so I'll be posting several times today. 

No doubt you’ve already heard the good news: In a presidential memorandum President Obama directed all Medicare and Medicaid-funded hospitals to honor patients' wishes about visitation and decision-making, and prohibited discrimination based on (among other things) sexual orientation and gender identity with regard to such matters.

After he signed the memorandum, the President placed a call to Janice Langbehn, who was denied access to the deathbed of her partner of seventeen years despite having provided a valid, written advance directive. Ms. Langbehn’s tragic loss and mistreatment, and her subsequent activism, were the catalysts that brought about this important development.

Here, she speaks with Anderson Cooper about the President’s action and about her case:  

 

Next up: more about the memorandum itself.