It's not very hard. In California a doctor can give you a recommendation for any condition for which marijuana may be helpful. This includes things like stress, anxiety, insomnia...
I've got with these guys, they have two offices in SF and an online appointment scheduler:
http://green215.com
My favorite reason I've heard of for prescribing medical marijuana: writer's block. A police officer told me that, so I'm inclined to believe its true.
That's cool; what are the repercussions of getting such a card, though? Do you get on TSA's no-fly lists? Are you automatically exempt from holding jobs in the Government? Something else that I'm missing, perhaps?
Trivially difficult. There are MMJ "clinics" that are basically rubber stamps: pay the fee, get your card. The apocryphal story is of a friend of a friend going to the clinic and saying, "So I have this problem, Doc. I can't seem to get enough pot," and being given a card.
It's perhaps not that easy, but it's within delta of that.
There are lots of jokes along those lines, but honestly, the marijuana doctors' actions seem pretty rational to me.
The thing is, marijuana is thought possibly to be beneficial for a huge swath of conditions, many of which are primarily self-reported like insomnia and migraines. A normal doctor would probably not give you the third degree you before suggesting a treatment for these conditions either. And since marijuana is largely benign even when it doesn't help, this is not really irresponsible on the marijuana doctors' part. My doctor was advocating a riskier course of treatment when he told me to take ibuprofen!
I believe THC and cannabinoids other than CBD do have their own medical benefits - they're just not publicized as much. Most probably because THC is psychoactive which a lot of people aren't comfortable compared to CBD which doesn't have the same sort of "high" effect.
Not necessarily, particularly depending on what you specifically want to treat.
If you go poking around weedmaps.com (well, after their site starts functioning again :/), and look into strain-specific details there, there absolutely are low THC strains available, and also amazingly high THC level strains. High and low CBN/CBD, etc.
In addition, they have some space dedicated to breaking out the main/known active contituents in MJ, and what they're believed best to affect.
motion of doctor's hand on generic approval form
You pay $100 (+/- $50) and you can immediately walk down to a dispensary and get whatever you want.