How we can all discover ourselves in health

Yesterday I had such a good chuckle to myself while I was driving. Listening to the radio I heard an advert come on, and the CEO of Discovery Health Mr Adrian Gore was saying how easy it is for people to dismiss health insurance as an expensive cost they don’t actually need, when they are prepared to pay so much more for luxuries. He then hinted that Discovery has 2 million members, which I thought was quite a lot.

Just for my own amusement I then took out my calculator and multiplied half a million people by R1 600, which may be a reasonable monthly premium that the average Discovery member pays on their medical aid. Of course the real figure is much higher, but R1 600 was enough for my purpose. Guess what? My calculator returned this message “too large value entered”. Gees! Like, how much money IS this? Bringing out a more powerful calculator – which probably has more brain power than the idiot who captained the Titanic – I got a number back that read 800 000 000. Eight hundred million rand per month in revenues. At least. The company made R1.1 billion operating profit in its latest financial year, up 34% from the previous one.

Make what you will of these numbers, but that is a fair reflection of how much Discovery makes in monthly revenues. I have no clue how Discovery, or for that matter, any other medical aid scheme make their money. I assume they invest most of what we submit to them via debit orders every month, since only a small percentage of us claim back in hospital, sick, or operation fees etc. These schemes, interestingly referred to as such, basically “administer” money on your behalf, in case you need it. And you obviously can’t claim all of it back. The only time they can lose money is either through fraud or if they make very bad investment decisions, like putting your money through a pyramid scheme for example. It sounds to me like a financially awesome business to be in.

Here’s a quick suggestion for Discovery and other high-end medical aid providers. There are 47 million people living in Mzansi. Given that Discovery is the biggest of the lot, bigger than five or more of the next ones below it combined, you can do the sums and see how many don’t have medical aid. Like the Post Office Bank and the Mzansi initiative that were launched to bank the underbanked, medical aid schemes need to strive to give access to at least some of their essential services to those who really need them most; poor people. These folks need doctors’ fees, maternity support, medicines for their health, ARVs in some cases, etc. They are not asking “subsidised” gym membership or access to the latest movie showing at the cinema.

Imagine spreading just R20 million of R1.1 billion worth of health care among 30 million people, even 20 million individuals. Imagine that.

DSTV: so much more of less

Three years ago a friend of mine who works for Multichoice’s DSTV division phoned and asked me why I was not a DSTV subscriber. I simply told her that I did not have much time for DSTV, that I was busy with interviews, and writing hundreds of articles for my then-employer. Watching perpetual television was not in my schedule at the time. The other reason was that I didn’t see much in the offering to suit my viewing tastes. Later on I reversed my decision, realising that the people I lived with could enjoy some of the entertainment offered by some of the DSTV channels, very few of which I knew anyway. With time I’ve also been able to enjoy some of the offerings on DSTV, channels like The History Channel, ESPN, MM1 and MM2, Discovery, Disney and others, rank highly on my to-do-list. I love the fact that I can watch sports like Formula One live on SuperSport.

About two months ago I wrote an email to the head of DSTV programming enquiring about something. The gist of my query related to an apparent lack of my type of programming on DSTV. One of my favourite channels on the satellite service channel is Series, which, as many of you know, plays series like dramas and soapies. Old and new, you’ll find “classics” like Baywatch alongside The A-Team, Melrose Place, Knight Rider, Home Improvement, Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. I explained to the DSTV lady that as much as I enjoy some of these, I didn’t feel complete as an African in Africa, without reruns of programmes like Martin, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, Good Times, The Wayans Brothers, Living Single…it was a long list. I get the Grammys and the Oscars, but I don’t get the Soul Trains and the NAACP Image Awards or the BET Hip Hop Awards. While other “cultures” are represented with several DMX music channels, I can’t find any kwaito channel on DMX, any gospel, especially African gospel, and there is no 90s R&B on there!

Guess what? Two months later, and counting, I still have not received ANY form of reply whatsoever from this powerful person at DSTV. This after paying a stipend of over R500 to these folks in Randburg, north of Jozi. Apart from being peeved right inside my nostril hairs at being ignored, I realised then that DSTV is not here for me. It’s just here for DSTV and a few other people who don’t necessarily like the same things as I do.

So when ICASA announced that four satellite broadcasting licenses had been issued to Telkom Media, On Digital Media (ODM), e.tv's sister firm, E-Sat, and Walking on Water (a company devoted to pro-Christian programming), I jumped for joy. It felt like the day Cell C and Virgin Mobile came along, or the dream I had of an announcement that Telkom was about to get three more players in its fields. All these new companies have promised a combined total of over 100 channels between all of them. Fantastic news. ODM even says they’ll adopt a pay-as-you-watch system where you only pay for the channels you actually watch. More wonderful news. And none of them will charge over R350 per month! Amazing!

Come 2008 around about this time all these new players would have launched their menus to us all. Maybe by that day I would have had a response from this big honcho at DSTV. Or maybe I would have switched suppliers and gone for one of the new players, by which event her response will be totally meaningless to me.

RIP Lucky

Amid all the Rugby World Cup euphoria, South Africans woke up to the terrible news about the killing of reggae musician Lucky Dube. Dube, 43, was shot and killed instantly when he was hijacked by a gang of men near Bassonia, south of Jozi. Why anyone would kill Dube, right in front of his kids, is still baffling. Hijackers have been given license to take our cars away from us, but taking our lives is totally unnecessary. Widespread condemnation and fear has been heard throughout the land from this very sad event. I just hope rumours of an "inside job" are not true.

Dube was a true patriot, a national hero who rose from certain ashes as a farm boy raised by a single mother, to become one of the world’s most celebrated reggae artists. His achievements include earning over 20 international music awards and being the only SA musician to have signed a recording deal with the famous Motown Records label. He performed to thousands of fans at a time all over the world including Ghana, Jamaica, Australia and the US. The city of Dallas in Texas has even given him honorary citizenship.

For one known for massive reggae hits like “Slave”, “Prisoner”, “Together as one”, “Think about the children” and “Feel irie”, Lucky Dube actually started out as a mbaqanga arist, recording with his cousin Richard Siluma, the famous Richie S. In fact he recorded 6 Zulu albums and one Afrikaans before his very first English recording Rastas Never Die in 1984.

Dube was an avid fan of horses and owned a few on his KwaZulu Natal farm. Rest in peace Lucky Philip Dube. May your children and the rest of your extended family find inner peace as well.

Get out of your car, get into a taxi!

A while back, about 4 years ago, I was lucky enough to hitch a ride to the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. It was an awesome experience, one that I will always cherish. One of the major reasons I had a good time is that I was able to get to the racing circuit, some 10km distance from my hotel, easily, to and fro. Australia has a good tram system which for the purposes of the F1 GP, had exclusive entry and exit stations to ferry people around who are going to the circuit exclusively. It would pick us up about 200 metres from the hotel and drop us off about 20 metres from the circuit. Much like the recent Olympics in Greece.

Do we have a tram system? No, Jozi and other towns had trams back in the day, but not anymore. So how are we going to transport people who have come here to watch the FIFA World Cup in 2010 without any hiccups? Show them to the nearest taxi rank perhaps? I hear “Gautrain Gautrain” but what about those living in Polokwane, in Cape Town, P.E, in Durban? Buses maybe? On a short visit to Amsterdam in 2005 I used trams again, getting around was easy, even the last tram I took at about 10pm was still running and on time. Our public transport system seriously needs an overhaul.

This is why I don’t understand the new craze of local and provincial government to stop the public from buying new cars. Those of us who are of darker hue and/or frizzled natural hair will know that from the very first day you start working, your goal is to buy your own car and get out of the taxi system. The government should know this. Yet in Gauteng the craze is to get the public to use public transport more by creating, out of the existing “fast lanes” on the freeway, a dedicated lane to motorists who carry three or more passengers in their vehicles. Three or more. That’s a taxi. If you are used to travel alone you’ll suddenly have to invite a few others to join you everyday so you can give them a lift to and from work. This experiment was carried out last year on Africa’s busiest freeway, the N1 between Jozi and Pretoria, and it caused a lot of anguish to those who travel solo. Is the government itself trying to sabotage the good work done by the Department of Trade and Industry via the MIDP in encouraging lower vehicle costs and thus affordability for those who have never owned cars before?

It gets worse. Lately traffic lights have appeared on busy on and offramps near the freeways. What clear logic is there in these? I honestly can’t see how a traffic light that stops you on the onramp as you are about to join the freeway, can help ease traffic congestion. Maybe I’m just a foolish motorist.

Worse still, a few toll gates have been proposed on popular freeways around Gauteng. These include places like offramps near New Road in Midrand, the offramp near Buccleuch etc. In fact, what is being proposed is something like this, according to the South African National Roads Agency’s (SANRAL) advertisements over the past weekend:

The N1 between the Golden Highway South and the Allandale interchange in Midrand would have 10 tollgates, five on each side of the freeway.
The section of the N1 from the New Road interchange in Midrand to the Lynnwood road interchange in Pretoria will take about 7 tollgates.
The N12 would have a total of nine tollgates. The part of the road stretching between Gillooly’s there by EastGate Mall and the border between Gauteng and Mpumalanga would have five tollgates.
The section of the N12 from the Diepkloof interchange in Soweto to the Reading interchange in Alberton would have a total of 4 tollgates.
The N3 between the Buccleuch interchange in northern Johannesburg and Heidelberg road, southeast of the city, could have 8 tolls, four on each side of the road.
The N4 would have two toll plazas.

Therefore if you work in Pretoria and live in the south, you could find yourself paying over 8 times in toll fees. And that is just going ONE WAY! The system will use prepaid cards that you buy so you don’t have to stop all the time to slide a credit card or pay cash.

The public, that is you and I, have a chance to comment on these proposed developments before the closing date of the 14th November 2007. I suggest we do.