There are many cases in which only "family" is permitted to visit,

So the solution is to change marriage? Wouldn't a better solution be
changing the visitation policy?


It's a single-point-of-contact solution. There are many hospitals that you or
your loved one might end up in, and changing all their policies is not an easy
task. It is porably not even possible to get taken seriously. What hospital
in (say) Montana is going to listen to somebody from Georgia who wants them to
change their policy just because one day they might break their leg while
chasing a cow?

There are many benefits that are conferred on "family", of which hospital
visitation is only one example. Some of these benefits are confered by law,
some by custom, and some by policy. It's a hodgepodge, but worked in the days
when everyone was pretty much the same.

Now that people live their lives in more diverse ways, the old rules don't
quite cover it all. When the mind and the customs expand, sometimes the rules
and words ought to also.


or to make decisions on behalf of the patient.

Wouldn't a power of attorney cover that situation?


Yes, in that particular case, maybe, if the hospital chooses to accept such a
document, and the document is drawn up within the guidelines of the hospital,
and you happen to have the papers handy, and the business office is open and
willing to process the papers. Sometimes (personal experience) you have only
hours to have things settled to get permission to visit or talk to the doctor
or be locked out the front door while your loved one dies, and all it takes is
one social worker who got up on the wrong side of the bed to really mess you
up.

For an (imperfect) aviation correlary, consider the case of instrument approach
procedure design in Lower Grasslandia. DHs are set up by law to be 250 feet
above the highest "Official Obstacle" for that airport. Official Obstacles are
defined as buildings, towers, gantries, and other structures located within
1000 feet of the touchdown zone of any runway.

This works for many years, because grass does not grow higher than buildings.
But after one particular international flight, shrubs and trees started growing
near some airports. There was talk about banishing trees, but some people
liked them and planted them near their houses, despite their being viewed as
perverted. But still, instrument approaches had to be designed and modified.
Eventually each approach had a hodgepodge of exceptions, none of them at all
consistant with each other (and some not even consistant with safe operating
practices).

The simple solution is to amend the definition of "Official Obstacle" to
include trees, shrubs, despite the fact that they were "natural occurances" and
not manmade "obstacles". It expands the IDEA of an "obstacle" in ways that
Lower Grasslandia had not even considered, and there was an uproar, which runs
to this day.

Ultimately, people started putting parachutes into their airplanes in case they
ran into an unofficial obstacle-like protrusion, but that didn't really work
very well and it spawned endless debates on their equivalent of Usenet, which
used up all the ones and zeros and brought forth the collapse of their
civilization. That is why you can no longer find Lower Grasslandia on any
atlas.

Jose

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