our healthcare system is so fucking broken
even if you ARE lucky enough to have insurance and can afford to get "healthcare", its so bad quality that you probably wouldn't even want to pay for it
doctors don't trust you or listen to you or give a fuck about you, they never believe you, often they read more bad studies than they think you do. they make you feel like shit for even bothering them. maybe you'll get a "have you tried not being autistic". "fuck you, not my department." "simply eat more healthy food." "how dare you try to self-medicate. how dare you try to fix your problems without my authority" "maybe you're just getting older :)"
we went to an optometrist a little while ago to have our first eye checkup in a decade, even though we didn't perceive anything being wrong, just to make sure things are fine, and it felt like everyone there thought we were fucking crazy for getting an eye check up without having any obvious vision problems
cdc is little more than a sock puppet for corporations at this point, serving a psychological propaganda role of assuring people that everything is fine, when it's NOT fine.
medical journals are absolutely PACKED with completely fucking awful science, p-hacking, harking, data dredging, publication bias, and irrelevant studies with small sample sizes, and the news media loves to turn this festival of scientific malpractice into authoritative announcements of medical truth. medical journals have basically a legitimacy crisis, there's so little quality control, or care about scientific integrity, or the scientific process
war on drugs making it difficult or impossible to get medicine, from adhd meds, to life-changing treatments like psychedelic-assisted therapy
if you're autistic then fuck you, medical places only do stuff over calls.
you can't actually fully trust most therapists, you can't tell them shit if you are having a mental health crisis, because they have the authority to incarcerate you in a psychiatric "hospital" without your consent. so in order to get mental health treatment you have to play this stupid game where you have to only half say things for your own safety, where you have to lie to your therapist to protect yourself, and the things you can't say to your therapist only get worse and worse because you can't talk about them.
your teeth and your eyes are not a part of your body
and even the simplest shit like getting labs done requires interacting with corporations that have entirely phoned it in on even trying to be clear about even basic shit like when they are open. labcorp has all the effort levels of a thoroughly stoned, hibernating crocodile (unless you owe them 10$ in which case they will send you frantic letters like you are driving them into financial ruin)
even things that should be easy like getting retail, nonprescription medication you need at the drugstore, like acetaminophen, is difficult when the drugstores are always low on stock of basic-ass stuff, so you show up there and are just greeted with empty shelves, or they only have extra-strength in stock of these painkillers which are dangerous in high doses, or they lock shit like ibuprofen and toothpaste behind a glass cabinet because they think you'll steal it, and you have to ask an employee to open it (which you won't do, because you're autistic, so guess you're just not getting medicine today)
the ONLY medical people i've had even a POSITIVE interaction with this year, were a physical therapist (who i stopped seeing because of Bad Time, and probably should be seeing again but it's just hard with fatigue and adhd), and the audiologist i'm getting custom molded earplugs from so i can even slightly cope better with the absolute sensory nightmare that is the outside world.
it's no fucking wonder so many people go down alternative medicine brainworm rabbit holes, when this system gives you almost NO reason to ever trust it, at no point do you even feel remotely like your health matters to anyone.
arghhgaarrrrrrrrrrRRRgghadskjgdagd
i feel like crying now