Resurrecting George Wallace

Here I was, thinking that we had all pretty much agreed that ethnic segregation was a bad thing. I mean, even Alabama is on board these days. So imagine my surprise when I found this article about how some people, here in 2008, want to set up a separate race-based health care system:

Calling it a solution to government oppression, several chiefs representing Treaty Six territory took the first steps Thursday afternoon towards creating a health system autonomous from the federal government.

Their vision includes Indian-run hospitals where patients can receive either contemporary or traditional healing methods, the latter relying on holistic and natural medicine from plants and roots.

Besides the obvious problem with operating hospitals based on race (if you don't see them, go read my opening paragraph a few more times, and maybe do some Googling based around this post's title), there's another problem with this idea: if you've been diagnosed with, say, leukemia, I'm not sure that the best first course of treatment is a week in a sweat lodge.


(Update and Errata: it has come to my attention that a sweat lodge is not considered treatment for leukemia. Proper leukemia treatment under this system would instead involve chewing the bark of a birch tree.)


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a palm.