What is a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care?

A Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care (DPOA-HC) is a form that allows us to name a person or persons to make decisions about our health care in case we don't have the capacity to make those decisions ourselves. It will give direction to the kind of medical treatment we want even If we cannot communicate those directions.

Advances in medical technology have brought upon mixed blessings. Now a days people are living longer and longer lives. Yet some feel the quality of life does not match the quantity of life. In other words, many people wonder what good is it to live to be a hundred years old if we spend our last years confined to a bed, not knowing who we are, and unable to feed ourselves. "Is it really living?” some ask.

Today, most courts agree that we have the right to control our health care. It is your right to accept or even refuse treatment. Doctors do not have the legal capacity to force us to live. They cannot force us to take medicine or receive other life sustaining procedures if we expressingly state those wishes. If you are unable to communicate those wishes then putting them in writing is the only other way to do it. That’s why today we have access to the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care form.

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If later on you change your mind about your medical wishes in your durable power of attorney form then you can revoke it (make it not legally valid). Depending on which state you live in there are laws that will revoke a power of attorney. For example some state laws will automatically revoke it if your spouse is not appointed as your agent (person executing the DPOA-HC). Doing the research of your state's current procedures is the only way to be absolutely sure it will be revoked.