On Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009, Leonard Pitts' editorial column told the story of Joe and his wife who'd collapsed on a cruise ship. Their children traumatized; Joe was denied access to said wife as she lay dying in a hospital emergency department. Then he explained that the couple he was describing was not Joe and Lisa, but Janice and Lisa, a homosexual couple in Florida. His column quoted Janice's account of a conversation she had with the social worker: "I need you to understand that you are in an anti-gay city and state and you won't get to know about Lisa's condition or see her." The hospital disputes this account. Without questioning the validity of that statement, Pitts goes on to recite the party line: increasingly anti-gay nation (his italics) mean-spirited amendments legislation that made scapegoats and boogeymen of gay people. Leonard Pitts is ignoring one huge elephant in the room. HIPAA Laws. The Healthcare Information Portability and Protection A...
My family runs when they hear me say this.