I’m slowly coming to term with the fact that, I cannot afford any longer to have a decent, honest and simple life!

I never thought for a moment of being in control, but at this pace, I feel like a sitting duck, and it hurts..

So it just happened that I’m in Chinchilla for work, and one of my medicine has run out… I still have two repeats of the medicine, but I had this conversation with other people that have been in Chinchilla most of their life and what they told me, it kind of made me feel really sad.. They have jobs, normal jobs, but they still cannot any longer afford to see a doctor in their local medical centre.. Why?

Two reasons: Cost and availability.. Lets start with the first..

To see a doctor in Chinchilla you only have One option. The Chinchilla Medical Practice. There were apparently two options sometime ago, but no more.. We all know what happen when a business has no competition to deal with.. To see the doctor in Chinchilla for 10 minutes (but it has to be less than 20 minutes) as classified Item n 3 Level A, a pensioner will pay $42 while anybody else $49, but if in need of Item 44 and Level D we are talking about $147 for the pensioner and $158 for everybody else..

If you may wonder what the Item and or Levels are including government rebates you can find more info HERE and HERE.

Now, I’m not an expert on this matter,but it seems to me that we have now gone full circle, from Bulk Bill, pay only the difference between the rebate and the total cost, to the common practice to charge for the full cost and let the patient, sorry the customer, arrange and organise for the refund of the difference..

This is all good for a young person with a middle income job and plenty of energy to deal with the lot, but for a pensioner, this is hell! I don’t see, anything positive coming out of this and definitely neither care or love for an old patient, sorry, customer.

I haven’t mentioned specialist visits, because most pensioner have no chance to play that card, unless by booking a visit at the hospital, where perhaps in few months or a year, someone will see them, if not too late.. If you think I’m joking, do you own research and then come back to me with your own finding..

Then we have availability. You see the few doctors left in town are now fully booked (hence the chance to charge what ever they want per visit), so if you are new in town and need to see the doctor, you have two choice: the hospital or book an appointment to Tara or Dalby.. Other than that, I have been told that also the Cemetery is now quite expensive.. You can bury an adult for $4407 or a child for $937 unless is a weekend in which case you are in bad luck.. It will cost you another $3601 dollars on top of the $4407. Again for a child is only another $2225 on top of the $937..

But if you let your family cook you, then you are in for a bargain of only $420 dollar plus the tiny hole in the garden for another $645 dollars. I guess now we know why so many people ashes get scattered at sea…

So, what has happen in Australia since Covid or the flu as most people do call it now again, has lost the edge in the media coverage.. Well we are back to usual business but with vengeance.. Every business out there wants to recover the ground lost during Covid, and here it is the sad result…

Food prices up 30 to 50%, fuel prices out of control, transport company going out of business, while Woolworth and Coles are still announcing massive profits.. Everything is on the rise, everything other than the low classes and the pensioner… But fear not, as Samsung and Apple has just announce new phones coming out in 2023, with 512GB of memory for a merely $2419 dollars…

I’m more of a movie fan so maybe the new Titan Zeus TV will find a place in my life soon… If only I had a $1,700,000.00 to spare..

Back to the original topic, those people and more importantly the pensioner I was talking to, they are now forced to drive (if they can, but there are also buses available) to Tara or Dalby to see the few honest doctors left that still Bulk Bill they patients. That’s correct, they still CARE for their patients! That’s until they can afford to do it.. The Bulk bill system will become soon extinct, like the “fair go” and the “Australian Dream”… But we need to be honest ourself. It is not the doctor’s fault. A good doctor that can see 6-8 patients per hour, will still only make $160K per year and that’s before expenses are taken out. Then you have pharmaceutical commission to take in consideration as well, but you also have personal insurance..

It is the entire system that’s broken! The doctor is just trying to stay afloat while it can.. Then again you don’t see often doctors driving ugly or old cars either, so perhaps it is still a good living. I mean, after all there are still doctors out there doing the right thing. Not that any of these makes any difference for the $532 weekly dollar of the pensioner.. The rent, food, bills, medicine, I really don’t know how they are doing it, but it can’t be either easy or enjoyable..

It’s amazing how little we understand about our surrounding, until something does affect us directly, in which most cases, it is normally, far too late. This entire society is based on this simple principle…