[2] Each day thousands of health care decisions for incapable patients are made in New York hospitals, nursing homes and hospice programs in accordance with the standards and requirements of the FHCDA.
Source:[3] The FHCDA is based on recommendations of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law in a 1992 report, When Others Must Choose: Deciding for Patients Who Lack Capacity.
[4] The Task Force is a multidisciplinary body created in 1984 by Governor Mario M. Cuomo to recommend public policies on bioethical issues, including decisions for patients who lack capacity.
[5][6] Previously, the Task Force issued reports on, among other topics, brain death,[7] do not resuscitate orders[8] and health care proxies[9] – all of which led to new laws or regulations.
[10] Until the FHCDA was enacted in 2010, the law in New York on life-sustaining-treatment could be summarized in three principles:[11] First, an adult patient with capacity had a broad right to choose to forgo life-sustaining treatment.
One of the Task Force members, Rabbi David Bleich, wrote a dissenting statement emphasizing that surrogate decision-making, unlike the patient's advance directive or appointment of a health care agent, was not an extension of autonomy, and was "stark abnegation of preservation of life as a value in and of itself".