Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, October 15, 2003.
EMBRACING SUMMER'S FIRST WARM FRONT
LAST evening, the saddest of sights, a soft-serve ice cream van - overheated, hissing and already exhausted - was being hooked up to a tow truck by the side of the road. Not the best start to the warmer weather, one imagines, for the unfortunate owner. Back on my bike trying to lose weight faster than my body prefers, embracing the first really warm front of the season, I rode past poor old Mr Whippy on my way through the city. By the way, did you know the weather term ``warm front'' was coined in 1917 by Norwegian scientists influenced by the battlefield vocabulary of World War I? Now you do. Riding along Waymouth St past Koorong, the shop that sells bibles and religious stuff, and having a smile at the front door security system meant to deter shoplifting. If Christians cannot trust themselves, who can you trust? Prisoners must really miss the summer, I thought, pedalling on past the remand centre, in Currie St, which lacks a very long-term car park. One of the many drawbacks to being a prisoner, or a refugee at Gulag Baxter for that matter, must be the thought of the beach waiting out there beyond the wire. Speaking of refugees, I was standing in a bank queue recently and ahead of me a woman, in leopard-print leotards and a purple jumper, reached the teller just as her mobile phone broke into the theme from "Sex and the City". Instead of turning it off, she took the call and made the teller and the rest of us wait. Soon she was snapping back into the phone: "They've got rice, they've got pasta, haven't they? They've got bread, they've got plenty to eat..." Whatever happened to a balanced diet? The woman hung up, shaking her head angrily, and half-apologised to the teller for keeping her waiting, which was no consolation for the rest of us. "Hate doin' that, hate it when other people do it," she said, shoving the phone back in her shoulder bag. "I'm in charge of a buncha refugees, gotta get money out to feed 'em." Puh-leeze, lady! Surely the refugees have enough problems already? Of course, she might have been telling the truth; then again, withdrawing $105 - she was very loud and precise about it - she might also be heading off to play the pokies. For the sake of the refugees, let's hope it was the pokies. Riding around the corner into Hindley St and past a perfumed prostitute, very stripped down, who smelled like over-ripe tropical fruit. Either that or she needed to change her diet. Did you know the well-equipped hooker now carries both EFTPOS and a GPS device for satellite positioning? I just made that up. Hereabouts, the cafe windows offer a passing parade of pleasant girls in flimsy dresses, silhouetted by the sunlight, leaving not much to the imagination. Ahh, summer. Under the Taliban, the Afghan women had to wear purdah, veiled head to foot, which left everything to the imagination. It certainly fixed the Visible Panty Line problem - problem, what problem? - but knowing men as I do, they probably still ogled. Moving right along...
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, October 8, 2003
DYING TO CLAIM A BENEFIT
A QUARTER of all people sitting in doctors' waiting rooms are said to be hypochondriacs convinced they have a serious illness despite medical reassurances to the contrary. There is no physical explanation for their pains so why, may I ask, are they entitled to painkillers under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which subsidises the cost of prescription medicines? The question occurred to me while watching a government advertisement on TV warning us, not in so many words, to stop abusing the PBS system otherwise it might collapse. Featuring Dr James Wright, the ad suggested the blowout in PBS costs - 60 per cent in four years - was partly a consequence of soft doctors too readily supplying prescriptions to people who did not really need them. I know what he means. The last time I went to the doctor seeking antibiotics for an infected cyst, by the time I left the surgery I had also been prescribed tablets for high blood pressure, which I did not know I had until then. Later on, my mother informed me that hypertension ran in the family. She said her mother had suffered from frequent nose bleeds and in the worst attacks she had needed to stuff cotton wads up her nose. She had dropped dead from a stroke. My mother said she, too, had been on hypertension tablets since the day I was born, which must set some kind of record for post-natal depression. Not wishing to have my head suddenly explode, I accepted the doctor's prescription but the drug did not work. He twice increased the dosage and still it had no effect. We more or less agreed I had "white coat fever", which apparently meant my blood pressure rose only when I visited a doctor. I stopped taking the drugs and my life returned to normal. Dr Wright also laid part of the PBS blame on complaining patients, probably hypochondriacs, who expected to be given drugs on every visit to a surgery. What he failed to mention was that 80 per cent of PBS subsidies were used by concessional cardholders - pensioners and the chronically unwell. There is not much we as a society can do about concession cardholders until such time as we decide to leave the aged and the infirm in the desert to die. Do not laugh. The right to life is a right we have compromised for self-interest or expediency. Abortion is one example, capital punishment another, so why not euthanasia camps? Dr Wright's answer is for people to adopt healthier lifestyles by eating well and exercising properly. But what if they don't? Should the PBS subsidise people who do not look after themselves? Should fat people be allowed cholesterol lowering drugs when they refuse to diet and get fit? What about smokers and what about hypochondriacs? The PBS subsidy will be $4.5 billion this year; the Australian defence budget is $15.8 billion. By my calculation, therefore, the PBS subsidy could keep our armed forces going for 104 days, after which they would have to be sent home to their families. A nice thought. And if peace broke out, we might need fewer prescriptions for anti-depressants.
DYING TO CLAIM A BENEFIT
A QUARTER of all people sitting in doctors' waiting rooms are said to be hypochondriacs convinced they have a serious illness despite medical reassurances to the contrary. There is no physical explanation for their pains so why, may I ask, are they entitled to painkillers under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which subsidises the cost of prescription medicines? The question occurred to me while watching a government advertisement on TV warning us, not in so many words, to stop abusing the PBS system otherwise it might collapse. Featuring Dr James Wright, the ad suggested the blowout in PBS costs - 60 per cent in four years - was partly a consequence of soft doctors too readily supplying prescriptions to people who did not really need them. I know what he means. The last time I went to the doctor seeking antibiotics for an infected cyst, by the time I left the surgery I had also been prescribed tablets for high blood pressure, which I did not know I had until then. Later on, my mother informed me that hypertension ran in the family. She said her mother had suffered from frequent nose bleeds and in the worst attacks she had needed to stuff cotton wads up her nose. She had dropped dead from a stroke. My mother said she, too, had been on hypertension tablets since the day I was born, which must set some kind of record for post-natal depression. Not wishing to have my head suddenly explode, I accepted the doctor's prescription but the drug did not work. He twice increased the dosage and still it had no effect. We more or less agreed I had "white coat fever", which apparently meant my blood pressure rose only when I visited a doctor. I stopped taking the drugs and my life returned to normal. Dr Wright also laid part of the PBS blame on complaining patients, probably hypochondriacs, who expected to be given drugs on every visit to a surgery. What he failed to mention was that 80 per cent of PBS subsidies were used by concessional cardholders - pensioners and the chronically unwell. There is not much we as a society can do about concession cardholders until such time as we decide to leave the aged and the infirm in the desert to die. Do not laugh. The right to life is a right we have compromised for self-interest or expediency. Abortion is one example, capital punishment another, so why not euthanasia camps? Dr Wright's answer is for people to adopt healthier lifestyles by eating well and exercising properly. But what if they don't? Should the PBS subsidise people who do not look after themselves? Should fat people be allowed cholesterol lowering drugs when they refuse to diet and get fit? What about smokers and what about hypochondriacs? The PBS subsidy will be $4.5 billion this year; the Australian defence budget is $15.8 billion. By my calculation, therefore, the PBS subsidy could keep our armed forces going for 104 days, after which they would have to be sent home to their families. A nice thought. And if peace broke out, we might need fewer prescriptions for anti-depressants.
