I
had a bit of a niggle going into this Friday night, though not in my back,
fortunately. I’m a hermit, by preference, and Friday night has always been ‘my
night’, by which I mean Mrs H and I grab a bottle of our favourite wine, each,
and sit down with a bag of sea salt crisps and chill out the evening watching
telly, which currently, with Coro Street, Graham Norton and Seven Days is good,
uncomplicated, fun Friday night entertainment. Best of all, after over twenty
years of marriage we don’t have to yabber at each other about the meaning of
life, the silence is comfortable, and there are no people we have to take that
extra effort to talk to. I was especially looking forward to this Friday because
I’ve averaged over twelve hour days for six days on the trot, working to
mid-night, a pace I have to keep up until the end of March, and Mrs H has had
me on vegetable juice:
…
every lunchtime, a regime I’m told is set to continue until I go below 100 kg
again, plus I’d seen too many people over the week, and was frankly feeling
peopled out: there had been too much noise. So when friends rang up and invited
us out for a tea party, and we couldn’t politely, on the spot, think of a way
out of it, I lost one of those small things that make life that little bit
better, my Friday night sitting quietly in my own head. Though the night that
unfolded ended up being about those crucial small things that make life better,
and how even those, or should I say, especially those, are being crushed under
the weight of the statist, regulated, planned society we’ve voted in.
At
5.00pm that afternoon, a client had called in with her records. She’s one half
of an old age farming couple, a bent up little old lady whose done it hard all
her life on a farm not quite big enough in scale – and who isn’t on the
Internet, so this post is safe. A good life, however, she’d be the first to
say, I’m sure, and made that ‘little bit better’ by being able to have afforded
the odd little luxury she otherwise wouldn’t have, from being a Rawleigh’s
distributor; albeit the profits left each year after tax were always meagre.
But she’s throwing it in. I don't know the facts of the full story, she was
bamboozled herself as to the details, so I’ve asked she bring in the two
letters she has from Rawleigh’s stating the demise of her few small pleasures
at the hands of the recent natural medicines regulation foisted on us all by
those busy-body meddlers in the Fortress of Legislation. Her top five items,
including what we all, of a certain age, know to be the miraculous Rawleigh’s
salve, are now too hard to sell, with customers having to supply their names as if it were contraband, and paperwork
and approval having to farcically go to and come back from Australia or some
damned stupid thing, so no longer could she simply sell me a salve, I’d have to
give up my privacy and wait at least a week to be delivered of product. She’s a
no meddling, hardworking, farming wife, she doesn't understand what Rawleigh's has told her, it was doing her
head in, so she’s out of it.
I
tucked that to the back of my mind, and thought that was the end of it, little
knowing, squat, bent over Mrs Rawleigh, by night’s end, was to become the topic
of conversation in circumstances even less sanguine.
Travel
forward in time about five hours, when after a lovely tea put on for eight of
us, our hostess, Mrs C, slowly, and painfully, delivered herself to the floor
between us all, and laid down on her back. We always knew she’d had back
problems, but nothing like it proved to be. Sometimes her pain is so acute that
even at our dinner party she had to lay herself on a hard floor for at least
half an hour so the pain can subside enough for her to go on. She said it
would've been rude to disappear for that length of time, so she may as well lay
here with us. We all laughed.
The
conversation that ensued went like this:
‘Mrs C. you need to get that seen to,
you can’t stay like that.’
‘Afraid I need an operation,’ Mrs C’s
voice came up from the floor, ‘it’s the only thing that’ll fix it, but the
doctor can’t get me onto the waiting list.’
‘Demand your doctor puts you on the
waiting list. You can’t live like this.’
‘There’s no point demanding, I’ll
probably just make it worse for my chances; the doctor can’t get me on the list
because the hospital won’t put me on the list.’
‘Why not?’ In unison.
‘Because if the hospital puts me on the
waiting list, and then doesn’t get the operation done by a politically governed
time, they get penalised by the District Health Board. It's safer for them not
to put me on in the first instance.’ Mr C passed me the nut mix bowl over his
wife.
‘Why would they be charged a penalty?’
said Mrs G, new Scottish immigrant, apparently having lived far enough from the
NHS to not have figured it out like the rest of us had as to what had happened
in New Zealand.
‘The penalties are designed,’ Mr C took
over from his floored wife, 'to make sure they get through the waiting list.’
‘But because of that Mrs C can’t get on
the waiting list at all.’ Said Mrs G.
‘No. She can't. Bit of an unintended flaw, isn't it.'
‘So you’re,' Mrs G addressing the floor, 'on
a waiting list for the waiting list?’
‘There is no waiting list for the
waiting list.’
‘Then how do you get onto the waiting
list?’
‘The doctor doesn’t know,' came up from
the floor, 'I’ve been not-waiting to
start the actual waiting for two years now. We should’ve got private health
insurance, but didn’t on principle, because we thought all the taxes we paid
entitled us to free healthcare.’
I could have said at this juncture - but didn’t, it would’ve been
inappropriate - but Clive James once said of the Soviets they thought they had
free healthcare, but it ended up costing them everything they had.
Come
to think of it, Mrs C has been not-waiting for almost as long as Mark Hotchin
has had his life frozen without a single criminal charge laid, two and a half years in his case. Why have we all allowed the horse traders in the
Fortress of Legislation, for I seem to remember the natural health remedies
dictates were about horse trading with the Aussies as much as anything … why
have we allowed them to narrow our lives down, take away our choices and
freedoms, even in the details like this?
Back
to the evening, in a closing synchronicity, Mr P said ring that little women,
the local Rawleigh’s agent, and buy some of that Rawleigh’s salve from her:
…
it did wonders, said Mr P, for his knee two years ago when he’d had some sort
of a misdemeanour with a ewe. At which point I put my hand up, stood, stepped
over Mrs C, hostess, grabbed another bottle of Wither Hills from the table, and
said to them I had a sorry little story to tell …
So
next time you read anything about hospital waiting lists, ignore them: they’re
probably bullshit: just bureaucrats ‘playing the game’ they play with our
lives.
Free health care is code for rationed health care, which is code for no health care. To be fair, I think the public system works if you have a road accident or a serious heart attack, but if you need a hip replacement.....
ReplyDeleteThose of us who understood the code purchased medical insurance decades ago.
No points of disagreement Brendan :) Mrs C is right that by having to wisely take out private insurance, and forced to pay taxes for a public system, we are paying twice for our healthcare.
DeleteAn appalling indictment of our die-while-you-don't-wait health system. Adds to the argument for refunding everyone their share of tax spent on health, and letting them decide how their budget will be spent (not to mention refunding the rest of everyone's stolen money).
ReplyDeleteAnd further evidence that this National-led government is just as much a control freak as the Labour one before it.
I don't think our social democracies will ever be able to crack the mind-set surrounding public health that makes it untouchable by politicians wanting to get re-elected.
DeleteAmen to that, Mark. Witness Cameron in the UK, who won't touch the NHS despite its appalling record of avoidable deaths and gross neglect.
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