28th May 2003

GPs are such a rip-off

Maybe it’s because I’m a Cavanman but I just hate handing over my money to GPs. In fact, I hate having anything to do with the health service because the treatment starts from the premise that the patient is a complete moran and incapable of any judgement to do with their own health.

Over the years I have sustained a number of sports injuries. When bones crack an X-ray is called for. I know that and every doctor I’ve ever gone to has sent me for an X-ray as a matter of course.

I did something serious to my ankle during a football match last Christmas and it just hasn’t healed. There is something wrong in there and it needs an X-ray before anybody starts eliminating any cause.

So I need an X-ray. The famed one-eyed Albanian knows I need an X-ray. You wouldn’t have to have attended school for a long morning to know that I need an X-ray.

But I can’t go to an X-ray shop and have an X-ray because the rule is that you need a doctor to say that you need one.

So with my teeth gritted, I trotted off to the doctor hoping the guy with the cert would do something to justify my trip.

Firstly, I had to wait 40 minutes. (My time, of course, is worthless).

Then into the surgery I went.

“I’ve got a bad ankle,” I said.

“Mmmm”, she said.

“I’ll take off my shoe and sock”, I said. So I did.

She never touched my foot.

“You need an X-ray,” she said.

I never said a word - although I was afraid she might hear the grinding.

She wrote a letter. Helpfully she also wrote me a letter so that I could go to a sports injury specialist. Someone, in other words, who could actually help me.

The whole thing took about four minutes (not counting the 40 minute wait).

For this I was charged €40.

Can someone please tell me the moral difference between this and having your pocket picked, because I’m damned if I can.

This is a scandal.

Your body is not your own

X-RAYS remain the property of the Government because the plain people are too stupid to be trusted with them.

So it seems to me. I had this argument out with a hospital worker a couple of years back.

“I want to take my X-ray with me,’ I said. “We don’t give patients their X-rays,” she said.

“Why not,” I demanded.

“Because we don’t,” she ended the conversation.

And that just about sums up the whole sad situation.

Going private

I rang up Beaumont to book my X-ray.

They mentioned July 4. That was the best they could do.

I wasn’t happy. They told me to ring the private clinic. I did.

How much for an X-ray? €45, they said. When could I have it? Tomorrow, they said.

I’m bewildered. Why doesn’t the state simply send people over to Beaumont Private. The state surely can’t do it for much cheaper than €45. Instead they make people wait six weeks.

There’s another scandal