WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | CONTACT
A young woman from Betoota’s French Quarter has today chalked up a little win, of sorts.
In need of some advice regarding what seems to be endometriosis, Helena Timms says she’s finally managed to get an appointment with a GP.
“That’s the first step in this long road towards trying to get proper medical advice – an appointment with a General Practitioner who will probably do his best to dismiss the issue and suggest the groundbreaking idea of paracetamol,” laughed Timms.
“But anyyyyyway, that’s the way it is apparently.”
“Thankfully I’ve managed to get a bulk billed appointment in the first week of May….”
“Next fucking year.”
“Jesus christ, what has this country come to,” she sighed.
Bulk billing has been one of the pillars of Australian medical care, meaning you shouldn’t have to pay for your medical service from a health professional.
They health professional normally bills the government and they accept the Medicare benefit as full payment for the service.
However, for a variety of different reasons depending upon who you ask, many medical professionals are now no longer content with just the medicare benefit, and want a fair chunk more.
“So much for universal health care, I guess I’ll just have to pay to go and see some equally disinterested medical professional,” said Timms.
“I tried to get into a number of different GPs around town, but they don’t have any bulk billing appoints left either.”
“And I obviously just can’t go straight to a specialist, because, I don’t know, that’s crazy apparently.”
“So I just cough up I guess,” she sighed, politely asking our reporter to leave.
More to come.
