by SockPuppet ~ holding it up at Chez Hall
Our PM-in-waiting Tony Joe (White*) Hockey is smart – well he wrote his own book dinee? – but missed his chance to really sell the $7 medical co-payment (aka a tax on sickness) last May when he said “It’s only the cost of two middies of beer”.
What he shoulda have said was this:
“It’s only the price of two erections”
You see with the price of Viagra falling in mid-May from $65 for a bottle of 4 blue hard-on pills to $15, the cost of getting a longlasting fat is now only $3.75:
The little blue pill that changed many people’s lives is about to enter a rapid new growth phase, with the price of Viagra falling to less than
a cup of coffeethe medical co-payment.When Pfizer’s patent for Viagra ran out in mid-May, the company offered pharmacies huge reductions on their product, hoping to carve out some of the new cheap market before generic brands took over. The huge discount brand, Chemist Warehouse was the first to react, offering Viagra at $15 for 4 of the 100 mg dose – the active ingredient is called Sildenafil. The same packet had been selling for $65-$85.
That is very good news indeed but I think I will wait for the other hard-dick-enhancing drug to come down in price too before I try one on:
How the big price drop will affect Viagra’s main competitor, the Eli Lilly drug Cialis is still unclear. Cialis hit the Australian market five years after Viagra’s launch in 1998 but quickly caught up due to its promise of action for “le weekend” – up to 36 hours’ erection boost, unlike Viagra which lasts only a few hours.
Which would mean two Cialis pills would give you a stiff one for 72 hours for only about $7 bucks.
And that’s what I call …. A cheap bar and a 3 day growth
* And to really sell his ‘cheap roots’ message maybe Tony Joe White Hockey shoulda have re-released his famous song about Poking Salad Annie.
Please note that the correct title to the 60s song was actually POKE Salad Annie but was changed to POLK by prudes at the record company.
Anyway this is a great LIVE version of this original blues/soul/roots/Cajun white man doing black man music. Enjoy
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 
I have never bought into the Viagra thing to be honest Socky because it occurs to me that male plumbing failures are really not such a big deal. But then again I am not the sort of man who measures his self worth by how long he can attain or sustain an erection.( my abilities are not superhuman , but they are more than adequate, well I get no complaints about it 😉 ) Frankly I think that too many blokes can’t get their heads around the aging process or the fact that they are not just a life support system for their cock.
I have not tried it too Iain but Ithink you will now find lotsmore blokes do go onit seeing it is cheaper and will probably get cheaper still when the asians start selling it too. Still you have to get a Doctors prescription for it (*) so Tony Joe will be putting the price up by $7.
(PS no “complaints” means nuthing. Women do not “complain” if you dont do the job. You can only tell when you dunnit for them by the afterglow and when they start saying stuff they dont normally say like “oh how would you like a beer?” when you come in from working outside. That says you lit the fire Iain)
(* I reckon the reason a lot of blokes dont buy it is because of that. Who wants to tell a Doctor male (or worse still female) that you cant get it up and need some, er, help?)
Ok, socky. I get the humour. Slagging the proposed Medicare co-payment does piss me right off, though.
I don’t think you understand, so I’ll try to right that wrong.
I recently went on the age pension, and was naive enough to think that with a pension card the doctors’ office would be “bulk billed”. When it wasn’t, I consulted the rules, and to bill or not to bill is at the discretion of the doctor. So I asked her for the criterion she employs. The answer was very reasonable. She said “I think you will agree that we offer a full and complete service. If we were to bulk bill, we could not employ the staff that we do and your consultations would be cut short. That is not good medicine”. If they bulk bill, they only get the 35 bucks that Medicare pays.
The result of socialised medicine is the same as any other good or service into which the Socialist political class buries its snout. It’s graft, corruption and rorts. A Current Affair recently did a bit of an expose on clinics that bulk bill. In one instance a medicine man saw five patients in five minutes. Another saw eighty patients in a day and still had time for a game of golf. It is the Edelston scam all over again. Who benefits from a one minute consult? It certainly isn’t the patient. The outcome is inevitably that the honest folk pay. Socialism didn’t work anywhere else during the last century. Why would you expect it to work here? As with any such programme, the only winners are the scammers. The guy that can afford to be pissed all the time and smoke like a chimney can’t afford a co-payment. So he goes for a one-minute consult and the quack pockets $36 of taxpayer’s money The mark doesn’t even know the difference. The co-payment should be more like $20.
You’ve overlooked one (major) thing though, karabar. Most Doctors DON’T bulk bill and already charge well in excess of the standard $35 Medicare rebate. My Doctor charges $60 (more if you only pay ‘the difference’) and under Tony Joe White Hockey’s scheme will now (obviously) be charging $67 (and keeping $2 of the $7 increase). Please explain how that’s right? On what basis should I now have to pay my Doctor an extra $7 per visit?
I do understand KB. The extra $7 is for half a bottle of Viagra. When you pay the extra $7 the recepternist hands you the two pills. Two pills that will change your name into “Krackabar”.
Karabar
I use a clinic that Bulk bills a lot of its patients and the actual doctor has no idea how someone is paying (because that is handled by Reception ) so the method of payment have no effect on consultation length.That said I don’t have much time for the sort of doctor who does industrial production line medicine. Personally I’m blessed with a Good GP who always gives his patients what they need and who is a genuinely good healer. I will say though that there are occasions when all a person needs is something like a repeat script (as I often do) where a two minute consult can and does do the job perfectly. One would hope that in the greater scheme of things that these short, essentially administrative consultations would give a bulk billing doctor the time to give a few minutes more to those who need a longer visit.
Ray
I think part of your problem when it comes to getting medical attention is that you live in a small regional town where there is essentially little or no choice in who you can consult when you do need to see a saw bones. Thus there is not the competitive incentive to bulk-bill more patients.
You misunderstand. Most people already make a co-payment. In my case it used to be the difference between the $50 fee and the rebate. my current doctor charges $75 so the co-payment is the difference between that and the rebate. The budget proposal was to be a co-payment for BULK BILLED patients, who currently pay zip, nada, SFA. That is because the service they receive is WORTH zip,nada, nought.
No, Iain, there are 6 Doctors at the Bright Medical Clinic and as for other choices, we could go to nearby Myrtleford which has a bulk bill clinic. And Doctors certainly do determine the bill rate, not the receptionists who are, after all, merely employees.
Bulk billing tends to be more prevalent in the lower-socio economic towns & suburbs like Myrtleford. Even in Melbourne you’ll find most Doctors do not bulk bill and that it’s more limited to poorer or crowded areas. They work on volume, not necessarily lower service as KB claimed because, I can tell you, even at $60 per visit, our Doctors certainly churn ’em through and even get you to make a further appointment for a mere repeat prescription or, worse still, just to get your test results.
So my question remains unanswered: Why is a Doctor charging already well over the Medicare rebate (as most do) now going to be charging another $7? There’s no benefit to the economy, patients and other taxpayers alike. It’s plain wrong.
Oh I see KB has replied. Are you sure about that? I think it applies to all Doctor visits. The extra you and I pay at the moment is not a “co-payment”, it’s going into the Doc’s profit, whereas the $7 co-payment will be $5 to the Govt (ie a tax) and $2 extra to the Doc. I can’t see my Doctor absorbing the $5 or not taking the extra $2.
This from the AMA (sort of) explains it. No mention of it “only applying to bulk billing” in there. It’s pretty complex but what’s clear is the bit(s) I’ve bolded – ie the Medicare rebate will be cut by $5. For everyone:
https://ama.com.au/gpnn/7-co-payment-proposal-how-it-will-work
Lets be real her for a minute Ray as much as some of the government might want to enact the $7 co-payment at present they don’t have the numbers in the senate to do it. Which means that those who are getting upset about it are jumping at shadows a bit on the issue.
Fundamentally we don’t do too bad in terms of everyone having reasonable access to adequate medical care. care. No system is perfect but ours is better than most by my estimation. Of course if it were not for the efforts of government to keep a lid on costs the system would soon collapse and no one would be well served by that happening. So governments of all flavors tinker with this and that to try to get the best possible healthcare without going broke.
Now you complain about the sixty buck consultation fee but how many time a year are you visiting the Doc? Would it be less or more than ten times a year?
Some of the Govt? Iain, it’s in the Budget! The point is, regardless if they get it through or not, that they have signalled their intentions to do harm to the lower – middle end. They want to reduce Medicare, Iain, don’t you get it? And we certainly can (or could) afford to maintain it as is (even improve it) if they tackled it the right way. Even a slight increase to the overall 1.5% Medicare Levy would be better than what they propose.
And I do not look at this from my own perspective. Yes, I can afford the higher fees and God knows I don’t want to go to a Doctor in Myrtleford and sit with Myrtlefordites (I might catch something in the waiting room), but I see this co-payment as typical Coalition tactic of making the less well off pay for the better off. That’s their way.
The Coalition removed Medicare before (under Fraser & Howard’s 75 – 83 Govt) or have you forgotten? They are NOT your friends Iain.
I am confused Iain? If they dont get it threw the Senate will this mean Viagra will be free?
Oh free for Joe (*)? Hee needs it I guess.
(* Yes that Joe, Iain)
Ray
All governments “signal intentions”to do things that ultimately never manage to do and if we got OTT upset about them all then we would have to be on sedatives just to avoid having a heart attack. As I think I have said before when it comes to health expenditure there is no end to the length of the piece of string involved so All governments play this game of trying to balance the cost to the social benefits
The more you spend on health the more that is asked for to spend on health Ray.
Well I do have issues with the accountant mentality sometimes Ray but I also have a problem with the “There is an unlimited checkbook” thinking form your side of politics too.
I’m not looking for friends in politics Ray I’m looking for people who will try to live within our means and get the balance right on things like health funding.
Well your lot are not doing a great job on either count, Iain. Abbott & Hockey are already far worse economic managers than Labor and their attack on Medicare is actually bad for the economy too.
I’ve nothing much more to say about it because I’m in one way glad they’ve proved to be – in an incredibly short space of time – so unfit to govern. If somehow Shorten can get himself run over by a bus and the ALP can install a decent leader (Albanese or Burke come to mind) Abbott (or Hockey – whoever is PM) will then lose the next election. For sure.
Well Socky I really don’t care about Viagra and as for that “Joe” well I don’t think we want to give him that sort of medication, he needs a dose of Nembutal if you ask me 😉
That would have the same result Iain. Hed be STIFF as a board.
Gillard/Krudd/Swan and their corrupt unions virtually destroyed the economy with their asinine CAGW religion, trodding all over the productive in society to the extent that they ran the debt up faster than any of the zombie countries in Europe. The only WORSE ‘economic managers’ in the world are in Zimbabwe. What the universe do you live in Ray?
Hi KB,
I live in the same world that the vast majority of major world economists live in. The ones who say Australia’s economy under Labor was the best-managed economy in the world, or close to it. Something about lowest debt to GDP ratio, low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment, good-high economic growth and totally avoided recession while just about every other country went into one. Those same economists would look at your claim that “The only WORSE ‘economic managers’ in the world are in Zimbabwe” and suggest you’d been living on Mars, mate.
In any case, this is what I actually said:
“Abbott & Hockey are already far worse economic managers than Labor”
… and on available evidence so far, that would seem to be the case. Eg. How are they going on reducing the debt? How are they going on reducing the deficit? Look at the figures, they’re going worse and have lifted the debt ceiling from $300 billion to $500 bilion … just “in case”. And how’s that Budget going?
The best you could say is that maybe (just maybe) they’ll prove to be better (somehow). That remains to be seen but on the evidence to date, it’s a long shot. To say they Are already better than Labor is like Joffa saying Collingwood (who are presently 4 goals behind Adelaide in the 2nd quarter) are doing “better” than Adelaide. IOW, it’s mere barracking.
Oh, and about the co-payment and “only applying to bulk billing” …. what say you now?
Cheers.
I suppose you maintain that the “scientists” think the world is burning up. Gillard was gullible enough to believe that bull as well. I don’t pay any attention to what the activists say. I just go by the evidence. THERE IS NO FUCKING EVIDENCE!
In this case you are using the same upside down and inside out logic. To you it’s the “economists” that you are ready to believe. I just go by the evidence. If your mob pissed away $350 billion and have nothing to show for it but a billion a month in interest payments, and at the same time drove manufacturing overseas with a useless tax on air and enormous amounts wasted on useless “renewables”, they set the course for a $700 billion dollar debt unless something changes, and changes fast. As for your ALP/Green senators, they should be strung up by the knackers for blocking the changes necessary. As for your comment about the debt ceiling, you know damned well that is a result of your mob’s wrecking ball for the last six years.
And unless something is done about the distortions in the delivery of medicine, it will end up a basket case too. I have an idea. Let’s dispense with Communist medicine and education, and leave it up to people to make their own decisions. As in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. If a short life of booze cigarettes and fast food turns your crank go for it. If you prefer a longer stay on this orb, live a healthy lifestyle and buy health insurance, instead of just pretending that we live in freedom under a free enterprise capitalist democracy.
Huh? Okay KB, no I don’t think the world is “burning up” … but it seems you are mate.
Sorry to refer to economics as the main arbiter on how the economy is going but in the absence of any rational debate to the contrary (from your end) I’ll stick to that. Cheers.
Btw, I have private health insurance. And a SMSF. How you going?
Forgot to add, KB: Collingwood lost by 3 goals. Seems Joffa (and you) called it too early.
Karabar do you want this Viagra or not mate? If you just pay the $7 bucks copayment Tony Joe White Hockey gonna give you some for about $7 bucks per two stiffs and then you could Krackabar and stop being so aggro on my cutting edge polioemic visinary out-there and from-left-field and ahead-of-its-time post. I really just want all the guys here to get some puss you know. You too.
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And what is the handling & freight cost for delivery to the Surf Coast?
I get a reaction, when I take Viagra, I wake up with a stiff neck.
That’s because you’re a dickhead
Richard shoulda said “Viagra gives Dick a stiff dick.”
(Q) Have you heard the one about the lesbian that took Viagra? (A) She could not get her tongue back in her mouth for a month.