Are you protecting your hospital rights? We posed this question in a 2008 newsletter, and 51 of your fellow readers responded. Over half said they didn't know where to begin. But many others shared personal stories about how and why they did the paperwork. Their stories should inspire you to take care of yourself and your loved ones. 

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- Larry Roth, Kansas City, MO

[Editor’s note: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act creates national standards for protecting the privacy of health information.]

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"My partner and I are in a non-traditional relationship, happily unmarried,with children, and we have tried to be careful to make sure our rights are protected.

Kristina Hathaway, Raymond McCauley and family

We filled out the sheaf of forms and made sure that our primary doctors had copies. We also sent copies to our families (parents and siblings), and took to opportunities to send them other important documents -- insurance designations, copies of passports, that sort of thing. We keep an emergency file box with these kinds of things in the bottom of the closet by the door.

We got a lot of this ready preparatory to having babies, and it's been easy to keep it updated. It's now one of those once-a-year chores -- has anything changed, any new important papers to send out to friends and family?

It's been good for piece of mind. And just mentioning that we have the forms filled out has possibly saved us problems -- eyebrows go up when someone hears our different last names, but health care folks don't challenge you when they know you're organized."

- Raymond McCauley & Kristina Hathaway Mountain View, CA

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"We have already taken the important steps to cover ourselves in case an issue like this should arise.  We have power of attorney, living wills, and all other assets of our home documented in Wills to be left to one another if one should [predecease] the other. Being a former military wife, my medical [coverage] is intact, but [it] could be taken away if I should choose to MARRY. I will not [marry] because of this; it is not fair, but at 55 I believe it is a wise decision.

Everyone should have all their bases covered, married or not, if they are sharing a household together “for life” and depending on one another to care for the other if one gets sick or unable to take care of themselves.

One last note: there was an incident where I had to go into the emergency room, and at the time we had no power of attorney or written paper of any kind. It was just a sheer miracle that my beloved worked at the hospital and knew everyone! Otherwise, we would have been in trouble. After that, we took care of it the proper way to cover ourselves. We did use an attorney; it just felt better."

- Anonymous

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Need more encouragement? Click here for more tips and links to the forms.