Janice Langbehn’s life partner, Lisa Pond, was hurried to hospital with a brain aneurysm during a family cruise with their three children in 2007. Janice and her children were denied access to Lisa’s deathbed, even though there was no medical reason to prevent it. They waited for hours and only got to see Lisa after she had just died. Janice did provide the hospital with the medical power of attorney document.
From the report:
[…] the hospital refused to accept information from Janice about her partner’s medical history. Janice was informed that she was in an antigay city and state, and she could expect to receive no information or acknowledgment as Lisa’s partner or family. A doctor finally spoke with Janice telling her that there was no chance of recovery.
Janice filed a lawsuit against the hospital, but the court dismissed that, yesterday.
The court ruled that the hospital has neither an obligation to allow their patients’ visitors nor any obligation whatsoever to provide their patients’ families, healthcare surrogates, or visitors with access to patients in their trauma unit.
Feminist Philosophers 
As it happens, today my partner and I were discussing the transfer of two years of her pension credits into mine. For a full state pension you need at least 30 years.
Many women (for the obvious, time-old reasons) do not attain this.
I’m 2 years short. My partner has 37 years. And because this is the UK and we’ve registered our civil partnership we now have the chance, as do heterosexual married couples, to transfer two of her years to let me get my full number of pension years.
Reading your post took me back to the days when we too had had to sign Powers of Attourney and next-of-kin documents with our lawyer in order to defend ourselves against the forces of bigotry.
My heart goes out to that bereaved family.
Heartbreaking.
Speaking as a former health care compliance person, this should be unthinkable. Vile.
The hospital might not have had the positive duty to help family of patients, which I think is debatable, but they still had the negative duty not to harm, I think, and that is definitely violated here.
What has happened here is so horrendous.