Editor’s Note: We are at Day 170 of the Great Con II. In parallel with this issue, there’s news that over 20,000 positions have been cut from the federal healthcare system. Nearly 300,000 federal jobs will be gone by the end of the year. Meanwhile, during my recent travels in England and France, I talked with people who love their universal healthcare system and have no fear of bankruptcy from becoming ill.

This moment of American culture seeks to divide us, but we must keep fighting for each other.

I spent my teenage years in a rural area where, if you needed your back adjusted, you had to drive thirty miles to the chiropractor in a small town. The chiropractor, who resembled Lurch from The Addams Family, smoked between each patient visit. It was always a flat fee, I believe $25. I went with my fellow baseball teammates, and we would sit on a bench outside the office and get called in one by one.

As I came in, he’d put his cigarette in the ashtray, shake my hand, and ask what was giving me trouble. For me, it was always my lower back. The big man would have me lie on the table and then pretzel my legs and arms until everything along my back rattled into a proper place.

It always seemed to work.

Today, I’m fortunate to be part of a health maintenance organization that gives me great access to a family doctor. There’s no complaints there, but it is surprisingly meager when it comes to access to alternative approaches, whether a chiropractor, a massage therapist, or a ready prescription to ganja weed.

This is a big deal.

America’s healthcare system is a $4.5 trillion beast. You would think that at that level of cost, there would be more access to things to compete with expensive doctor visits, prescription drugs, and hospital bills, yet these lower-cost and preventive in nature approaches are routinely undervalued, underutilized, and, in some cases, actively discouraged by mainstream medicine and insurance providers.

Why?

Routine doctor visits and hospital care in the United States are notoriously expensive. If you don’t have an HMO or get old enough to make it to Medicare, a single primary care visit can range from $100 to $300. Emergency room visits often exceed $1,000, and hospital stays can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Medical bankruptcy in the United States is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Over 40% of Americans have some form of medical debt.

This should be a scandal.

In stark contrast, chiropractic or massage visits typically cost an average of $50 to 60 per session (my recent visits were $60 and $51, respectively). A person can purchase a pack of cannabis-infused gummies for around $20.

The cost savings of these alternatives are not just theoretical. Regular chiropractic visits are associated with a 60% reduction in hospital costs for chronic pain patients. Massage therapy, while less studied in terms of direct cost savings, has shown positive outcomes for pain management. In one randomized trial, 36–39% of massage recipients reported their back pain was “much better or gone,” compared to just 4% of those receiving standard care.

Medical marijuana, whether for relief from chronic pain, PTSD, or multiple sclerosis, has shown improvements in patient quality of life without addiction. It presents a cheaper and less dangerous alternative for many chronic pain patients. Compare this to the over-reliance on prescription painkillers—the opioid epidemic - drugs that are not only costly but have resulted in a wave of overdoses and death.

The biggest knock against these options has been the lack of comparable scientific data, though patients have reported reductions in pain and higher satisfaction compared to receiving standard medical care. Despite patient requests, these lower-cost approaches remain marginalized.

Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and many physicians derive significant revenue from procedures, prescriptions, and hospital stays. US doctors earn an average annual salary of over $300,000, whi;e the pharmacy and hospital industries generate a trillion dollars of revenue. Preventive and alternative care, which reduces the need for expensive interventions, threatens these revenue streams. Coverage is generous for drugs and surgeries, but limited for more hands-on therapies that could keep patients out of the hospital in the first place.

The undervaluation of medical marijuana, chiropractic care, and massage therapy is not just a quirk of the system—it is a costly failure of the human element in policy and economics. It is a devaluing of the human touch, the replacement of the exchange of energy for the exchange of currency.

The real question is not whether we can afford to embrace these options, but how much longer we can afford to deny them. We will either work quickly toward a more holistic, universal healthcare approach, or we’ll go broke dying within the current system.

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I’m including this not for the psychedelic aspect but because I want you to clearly understand how AI will one day be a normal part of our lives, and maybe too much of it if we continue to devalue human-to-human support.

Right now in the US, therapy is hard to get unless you have insurance, and sometimes there are not enough providers even with insurance. I’ve seen a lot of movement to online therapy, where you never have to leave home and can talk to a therapist. One colleague I had used this service and said it was helpful. So did a student I once mentored in a program. The industry is already trending toward more automation and convenience across disciplines, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. We must closely monitor whether the use of AI will ultimately reduce person-to-person care instead of supplementing it. There can be untold social outcomes we haven’t considered.

In the case of this story, a user used AI to help him through the self-medication of a psychedelic that is illegal in most areas. Despite a continuing stream of data that shows some of these psychedelics combined with therapy can work, our legal and healthcare industry will drag its feet for several reasons, due more to protecting turf.

With the rise of AI, what we should do is focus on creating thousands of more healthcare jobs, from therapists to medical doctors. The market, the doctors, and even the educational system create an artificial shortage that keeps providers low and fees high. AI is going to fill this void with computer intelligence unless we put more value on having people interacting with people, and that means public policy that wants people to have good-paying jobs and universal access to healthcare.

This is another reason why private means alone cannot control AI. It would be better for the government to take a stake in these businesses than in cars and computer chips.

I’ve heard this term before, but this brings understanding to its use.

Essentially, the fruits of democratic labor, such as “our” military-industrial-technological companies, are deeply entrenched in many of the products we sell to our allies. Because of this administration’s penchant for shitting on allies, Canada, Europe, and many others are now trying to assess ways to “get off the American grid” of technology.

This is unbelievably short-sighted.

Just plain dumb.

I am demoralized by the lack of understanding of our citizenry. On one hand, we have some of the best products in the world. On the other hand, we are weaponizing it in our relationships with other countries. This is similar to what China does with its Silk Road policies and Russia does with the former Soviet Socialist republics. It is so entirely undemocratic and unnecessary, it is as if a child is at the controls.

Maybe that’s the problem.

And Now….

Keep involved. Talk back to abuses of power. We’ve had dark times before in the country. Remember the young protesters of the Vietnam era. Remember the Freedom Riders. Recall the suffragette movement. Progress in the US has almost always come from people united and saying enough.

You have power. Be a good human in using it.