I see all these acupuncture/massage places around town that make such a big deal about billing your insurance or giving you your first session free if you’ve been in an accident. And I can’t help but wonder exactly what kind of dynamic that’s got going on.

I mean, I guess it’s nice if there’s a system to sustain all those people who realized that college doesn’t make you nobility anymore and decided to get Continuing Education In Something Practical but weren’t booky library school types or earthy nurse/midwife types, but medical economies that are clearly tied into power somehow raise my eyebrows a bit.

Down in LA I had medical weed papers. The stores were actually a kind of cool institution - every time retail space opened up in a marginal location you could stick one there and cover the rent and then some, and they were really a kind of charmingly old-school experience in a really alienating town. Like, you’d walk in and the worker behind the counter would recognize you as a regular, chat you up and talk up their new goods, you’d tolerate them working some mildly uncomfortable flirting in there sometimes, then they’d weigh out some bulk goods from a container behind the counter, maybe throw in a little extra treat, and wish you well.

But the doctors were ridiculous. There had been a plan to set up a system through the legislature but they rejected it, and on the back of cancer and AIDS patients an initiative passed that was intentionally full of loopholes, you ended up with this system where it was like “in return for funneling money to quacks and cynics, we’ll give you a license to circumvent the law!”

The first time I went to a doctor was kind of before it got huge. I claimed torticollis of the neck which has the virtue of being true and I like my virtues sometimes. He took my blood pressure, listened to me for a bit was like “oh, perfect, weed cures everything!” and elaborated for seriously 10 minutes, then recommended that I suggest my mom consider wearing ear magnets to quit cigarettes, charged me $200 and sent me on my way.

By the time I renewed I was going to a Persian doctor with her headshots on billboards in an office next door to a Santa Muerte temple/botanica. The waiting room was velvet wallpaper, crystal chandeliers, tons of mirrors with gold-painted frames, barred teller-windows like an Old West bank and 30 chairs facing a TV playing some pretty random movies and documentaries. She had glossies of the headshots lying out on a side table, I wonder if anyone ever asked her to sign them. There were tiny examination rooms lined up where assistants took blood pressure and she did a circuit, spending about 2 minutes with each patient. The session was $100.

By the next time she also had glossy headshots of her lawyer sister, she spent about 30 seconds with me, no assistants, it was $50.

In Florida they have a similar system but with hardcore opiates.