A health care proxy is a legal document that designates another person to make health care decisions on your behalf in the event that you cannot make those same health care decisions for yourself. It is essentially a power of attorney for health care purposes.
Everyone over the age of 18 needs a health care proxy because we can all become incapacitated at a moments notice. People do not know when they might become incapacitated or expect it but we can all plan for it. The reason why children (people under the age of 18) don’t require a health care proxy is because their parents have the automatic authority to act on their behalf and make decisions for them. As adults, we’re on our own.
What does incapacity mean? Incapacity could be any event where you no longer can communicate your desires. This could be a vegetative state, persistent or otherwise, or a coma. The health care proxy’s job is to tell the doctors what you would want, if you were able to communicate. Ideally, a proxy should follow what you had laid out in your health care directive. A health care directive is simply a document that lists what you would want or not want if you were ever to become incapacitated. For example, many people do not want to be kept in a persistent vegetative state and therefore their directive would state that and give the proxy the authority to disconnect life support. Without such a document and proxy, doctors and hospitals are very reluctant, without a court order, to “pull the plug”.
A prime example of an unexpected real-life event is the Terri Shiavo case back in 2005. Terri was a normal woman who suddenly collapsed into a persistent vegetative state in 1990. When all treatment and remedies had been exhausted, her husband decided that it would be better if Terri was no longer placed on life support. However, Terri’s parents did not feel the same way and a costly and emotionally wrought legal battle ensued. We have no way to know what Terri would have wanted if she had known what would happen to her back in 1990. However, if Terri had had a health care directive stating that if she were ever to be in a vegetative state she would like to be removed from all life sustaining equipment and named her husband as her health care proxy, the costly law suit would never had taken place. Terri’s husband would automatically be allowed to make her health care decisions for her, even if it meant ending her life.
Terri Shiavo’s case is just one example of how useful a health care proxy could be and how important one is when the unthinkable happens to us.
