Recently I have been struggling with an ankle strain so I decided visit my local acupuncturist looking for a quick fix, a magic bullet to help make up for my lack of strength training and fitness . The bill came as a bit of a shock!
I have been to this acupuncturist once before and was able to compare the bills.
For as long as I can remember Inflation has be relatively low in Australia, within our reserve Banks target range so there were not any big dramatic changes for the average working person like me.
Basically low inflation made little changes that were hard to see.
Then came along covid and seemed to throw a spanner in the works. Well many spanners in many different work places and businesses.
Luckily I do not use my health and medial fund cover much. So when I came to claim a rebate, it was easy to see the difference and some serious price increases.
My last claim was almost two years ago for an initial acupuncture consultation. My recent visit was a shorter session because I knew exactly what I wanted.
I suppose I should not have been surprised to see the 20% fee increase even with the lesser service but the health fund rebate was like 20% less as well. My health fund has been putting up there membership fees every year too. All this started to make my recent 3% pay rise feel pretty small and any sort of an early self funded retirement plan and living on a fixed income a bit of worry.