Medical Aids

Last year we decided as a company to change our medical aid from spectramed to the promised land that is Discovery. The broker made Discovery sound like it was the second coming of Christ. So at a greater cost to the company and every individual person, we decided to apply to Discovery and got accepted, with some restrictions. My parents who are both nearing 70 were given a 3 month probation by the medical aid. Also my mom's chronic medication was not accepted by Discovery as chronic so it comes out of savings.

This meant that despite taking out one of the best and highest packages that Discovery offers and not being allowed to use the medical aid for the first 3 months of the year and paying an amount of +/- R 6000 per month between them and the company they still ran out of medical aid at the end of September. So in effect they had medical aid for 6 months of this year only.

On my personal medical aid I also ran out of savings by end of September. So I say, what good is Discovery? we pay so much for our cover and get nothing for it. They make the threshold more and more difficult to get to and give us less and less cover every year but the premiums just keep going up.

The problem here is that the Medical Aids like Discovery thrive on what I call the What If? syndrome. Everyone says it, What if I have an accident? What if I get hijacked and shot? What if I need a major Surgery? What if my kid gets really sick? Because of that and that alone the medical aids in this country survive and do pretty well.

I think all medical aids are exactly the same, there is no one scheme that is better than the next. It's like choosing a winner on SA Idols, they are all bad singers, we just pick the least bad.

Children die of starvation

On my way home today I heard on the radio a sad story of 3 young siblings that died of starvation in the northern province.Their mother had left them at home to go out to find food. When she didn't return the children decided to go out and look for her. They were found dead all 3 of them, and they had died of starvation. The post mortem revealed that they hadn't had a decent meal in a about a week.
This story should outrage every single one of us as a society. We live in the most prosperous country on our continent and yet we still cannot find the means and the will to feed a family that was so desperately hungry. Our constitution is one of the most progressive in the world, it affords us many rights. Surely the most basic one is the right to a full tummy. I really fail to understand how we as a country can allow these sort of things to happen.
I really hope that anyone reading this understands how lucky we all are. How privileged we should feel for being able to feed our children and to give them the life that we want for them. This story put into perspective how stupid we can all be about material things, iPads, cellphones, cars , houses. Does it really matter if you drive a Toyota or a BMW.
This has really shaken me to my core, and I really am inspired in the memory of those 3 poor souls to do something in my own small way. I hope you all will join me.