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Oh, ok. My mom is now brow beating my father about signing a HIPAA form for the insurance company. First, she verbally attacked him and he told her to leave him alone, which, being sensitive to these things she kept bothering him until he said leave him alone more definitively. So she got mad and stormed out of the house. After triggering him, of course. And after telling him what if you got HIV from one of the transfusions? I'd have to take care of you! And it would cost me money!

But - no surprise - she came back and is now verbally badgering him about how he was wrong because he didn't wait for her to explain and she just wanted to show him what everything was and how to fill it out and explain each section to him, etc. Not neglecting to point out that she didn't even have to show him the HIPAA form. She could have just gone to the insurance with a copy of the power of attorney and the health care proxy, etc.

I'm just gonna throw a little rhetorical poll out there - passive aggressive or abusive? Answer: abusive.

Her complete cluelessness also astounds me. Not that I trust the insurance company to actually verify the whole POA/Proxy business just because they are afraid of not having up to date HIPAA forms. I'm quite sure that legally the POA/Proxy do not have any validity if the person in question is competent, communicative, and conscious.

Obviously, that's not something most people or organizations are going to bother to verify, which explains the news stories every so often about people getting ripped off by someone with their POA or whatever. But threatening to cut someone out of their own life and use those documents against them is straight up abusive. If you activate a POA and use it and the person is perfectly fine and you shouldn't have, I'm pretty sure that's illegal, too.