In Which Health Nuttery Abounds - Questions Included

Hi again.

If you've taken a look at some of my other web assets, you'll have caught sight of pictures I've taken of myself and posted. One thing the photos will make instantly clear: I've got eyesight issues.

There's no use in hiding the fact. But it does serve as a springboard for something else that's been nagging at me for a few years. To explain in detail: I'm nearsighted. Beyond the extended reach of my arm, it all starts to blur a bit. For a few years recently, there was a time when it seemed like my vision was improving to hear my eye specialist tell me.

But the process of keeping my eyesight issues in order was made more difficult a couple of years back when the first post-Harris provincial government was installed. You might have heard about the de-listing of eye exams. Bad enough that they'd been demoted from "annual" to "every two years". But this? I need my eyes for my work, whether it's data entry or drawing the latest panel of Local Hero. And eyeglasses or lenses - take your pick - aren't cheap as it is. Heck, even if you're able to get a job with extra health benefits beyond the basic minimum as defined by the province at any given point, it still isn't cheap.

Eyesight is not a luxury item for me.

The next thing up, and I have to admit up front that I'm not sure how it works right now: allergy issues. A few years back, I went to an allergy specialist to deal with some Spring issues. Nothing special, thousands if not millions of us have the same sort of Spring issues and we all cope to varying degrees. I was told that it would take about three years of injections, several times a week. This would be a pain as far as holding down a day-job was concerned. The biggie, though?

It would not be covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan(OHIP).

Not good. I don't know if this has changed in Ontario since then, and I also don't know if the same situation obtains elsewhere in Canada nor to what degree. I'd be glad of anyone speaking up to explain what they know about this.

The other major health issue the state of which I'm not quite clear on, although I suspect that it too is treated as a luxury item: mental health services. Specifically, the classic "psychiatrist/psychologist" appointment set-up. I could use some fuzzifying of the muddification - Allan Fotheringham, forgive me for the rip-off, please? - on this particular set of services. If memory serves, it's also very much on the "luxury item" list these days, unless you've got the right private-sector supplementary provider.

For a lot of people who fall between the top and the bottom of the income ladder, this will be a headache. If I've remembered correctly.

I started this posting out intending to write a rant, and now it's turned into a shopping list of questions.

Too many questions.