New and interesting developments.

Apparently, some doctors are no happier with the crazy religious fundies telling them who they can and can't see, and in what order, than they were the government.

Jenni called me, all excited, about a clinic being opened up on a co-op basis. Apparently, a group of about fifteen doctors and a concomitant support staff, have banded together and bought a large, eight-story building. Jenni told me that the top floor would hold a surgery, the next floors down a multi-bed recovery ward; single-, double-, and four-bed rooms; then offices; then exam rooms.

And this clinic/private hospital is open to paid members only, and the only people who can buy into the co-op are (drum roll, please) sex workers, political market workers, recreational pharmaceuticals users and dealers, and CPAs.

In other words, this private clinic is one that serves the sections of society that the radical evangelical fundamentalist women's clubs have lobbied to cut off from medical care because we offend their delicate morals and sensibilities.

And, since this is a for-profit clinic, Jenni's pretty sure that the concept will be spreading, and the more traditional hospitals (which are having some difficulty transitioning back to a free-market system from the single-payer travesty forced on us ten years ago) will have trouble keeping up. Jenni's pretty sure that the model will wind up the only game in town, and that the evangelical women's clubs will have a very difficult time getting one set up for themselves because of their attitudes.

I can't help but be amused.

Update: According to the press release/news story I just heard on the radio, the building being used for the new clinic is--get this--a brand new, state of the art hospital built for the city's main hospital system, ten years ago. It's never been used. Apparently, once the socialized medicine was pushed through, the hospital found out that they wouldn't be able to afford to move, much less make the mortgage payments. It was foreclosed on pretty much within a year of it having been built, and the bank let it go for a about ten percent of what it's actually worth.

And I love what they're going to call it: St. Mary Magdalene's Mercy of the Angles hospital and clinic.