Health Care -- Sketchtastic social medicine

Bug bites have been a common theme through this trip, but somehow I managed to escape both Ireland and Scotland without being badly bitten (they have a mini version of the misquitos called midges, with half as powerful a bite, but they come by the barrel-full). Of course, on my first day in Paris, what I thought was just an old bug bite, started to itch really badly, until I thought it just opened up from the scratching. Soon after I had a nasty pussing infection on my ankle that would not stop leaking. I gave it a few days, thinking it would just go away, but the thing didn't improve, and finally, I decided it was time to go to the pharmacist. Apparently you can just walk into a pharmacist and they can attempt to diagnose whatever the issue is here and treat it with over the counter medication. But this lady pharmacist told me to go to a doctor, then gave me the directions to one, told me it would be €25 and sent me on my way.

Now, there has gotta be some sort of deal worked out between the dr. and pharmacy, because when I showed up there, the office was in a regular apartment building, and no one was around. I got buzzed up and literally the entire place was empty. The doctor ushered me into his office, which apparently also served as his examination room. He took one quick look, told me I was bitten by a spider and it got infected from the poison, prescribed some antibiotics, gave me some quick instructions and tried to charge me €30! I told him the pharmacist said €25 and he immediately agreed, and muttered something to himself. He also only took cash, so the whole thing was quite sketchy. Then I had to go back to the pharmacist, pay another €10 for the medicine, and now hopefully my leg will heal.

So all in all, knowing I needed antibiotics in the first place, I had to go all the way to the dr. just to get a sheet of paper to bring back to the pharmacist (literally within 30 minutes) and had to pay a total of €35. Now healthcare being a big deal in America right now, I can't really say if I'd prefer this, even though that's what I thought when I was home. Clearly this guy was trying to scam me, and even though he may know what he's doing, I wouldn't trust him with anything more complicated than this. The fact that it was semi cheap and sorta easy to accomplish is great, but if I had any real problems there's no way in hell I'd want to go to him. So who knows, all I hope, is that this can all be worked out by the time my parents healthcare runs out for me so I don't have to go back to paying cobra, cause that sucks!