A friend just got back from the Big City, where she underwent assorted routine procedures at a highly-regarded clinic. Along with the usual stack of preliminary paper, she was given a disclaimer of sorts, wherein she was notified that said clinic no longer recognizes Advance Directives. It seems that this clinic receives its hospital privileges from Virginia Mason hospital, a venerable and also highly-regarded healthcare facility some blocks away, and VM has recently been acquired by Providence Hospital, run by the Catholic Church; hence the policy change.
I've seen the diaries hereabouts with respect to the Catholic Church's (or, at any rate, the Bishops') adamant refusal to offer medical insurance including birth control and abortion to their non-Catholic employees, but it had not occurred to me that Advance Directives would also be targeted.
It makes sense, of course: presumably these bozos equate refusal of resuscitation/heroic medical measures with suicide. As an added bonus, they can make a pile more money this way, billing the poor sucker in the bed for all the time and activity involved in prolonging the misery and, one assumes, getting the profit tax-free. Must be nice to have such a long-standing built-in scam.
I'm not anti-Catholic, particularly, any more than I'm anti-Christian (although I reserve my spiritual energy for the far more deserving Cosmic Muffin). As of now, however, my Advance Directive contains a codicil rejecting the option of care at any Catholic-affiliated medical institution, and instructions that, upon my demise, my corpse be deposited on their steps.