I'll Never Fall in Love Again

For some reason, my daughter and I have started to play this silly game where I sing I'll Never Fall in Love Again, the Burt Bacharach song, and she pretends to be bored by me singing this song non-stop -at least I think she's pretending.

I'm sure you all know the song* -it's about someone who is complaining that they fall in love, and always end up being hurt, but that they'll never fall in love again "at least, until tomorrow". The thing about love, it seems, is that although it could be said that we have negative experiences of every love affair which ends, we still look forward to the next time, hoping that this will be the definitive one -the perfect couple. There is no activity which matches falling in love for its infective sense of optimism. except, it seems, for the reorganisation of the Polish National Health System!

I have been in this country for around fifteen years, and in this time, the National Health System (NFZ) has undergone at least two complete overhauls (one of them involved a computer system costing a nine-figure sum which didn't work), and the most recent change has just the fact that instability can be worse than inefficiency. Following elections in October last year, the newly re-elected government decided to put a new minister in charge of health, and then completely rewrite the list of medicines and treatments covered by the national health system, with a deadline of January 1st.

A new formula was mentioned, but not clarified, which meant that a certain percentage of the cost of the medicine would be refunded by the NFZ, but this varied from patient to patient, and even from medicine to medicine used by the same patient. As usual, to make sure that the pressure is evenly spread, the fact was emphasised that pharmacists who honoured prescriptions which were no longer covered at that rate would be held liable, and fined. The pharmacists have taken two of the traditional favourite approaches to showing disagreement, with some refusing to take any NFZ-sponsored prescriptions, and a large number of them going to Warsaw to make noise and block traffic in front of Parliament.

As for me, I'll probably continue to go to the doctor privately. I say continue, but I've been four times in the last ten years, and nothing seems to be wrong with me generally, so at the moment I don't predict a large cost in medicines and pills. This may be down to my new healthy lifestyle (another benefit!)

Anyway, now, whenever I hear about the NFZ crisis, I'll hear Dionne Warwick in the background, which isn't a bad thing!

*If you don't know the song, you really should get to know it! Here's Dionne Warwick with the definitive version. Burt Bacharach is a genius.