There are many reasons why you may choose to have a healthcare power of attorney, but there are two specific reasons why you NEED one. Both reasons have to do with giving you freedom to deviate away from the path of default medical management. Let’s review!

Reason #1: You don’t want the default decision maker. If you can’t make your own medical decisions, local law dictates who will make medical decisions for you. Typically this follows some pre-ordained hierarchy (presuming you don’t have a legal guardian your spouse takes precedent, then adult children, then parents, etc) UNLESS you have a healthcare power of attorney that names a different person. So if you look into how it works where you live and you think to yourself, “Oh wow I would NOT want THIS person making my medical decisions,” then you are someone who needs a healthcare power of attorney. This is often the case for folks who are married but want their sibling to have legal medical decision making authority, as an example.

Reason #2: You don’t want the default treatment. Remember, when you can’t express your wishes, the medical default is always going to be “do whatever it takes to extend your life as long as possible.” While a medical decision maker assigned to you by default can make decisions about life support and CPR, there are more guardrails in place than there are for a healthcare power of attorney. So if you want to make sure that whoever makes decisions for you has total freedom to tell the doctors when to focus on comfort rather than life extension, you need a health care power of attorney!

Remember, it’s FREE to get this done! You can do one with at your physician’s office or with a social worker anytime. You can also download the forms from your state government’s website (if that applies to you) or go to www.Prepareforyourcare.com and get one done there.

You got this!