Safeway, Airmiles, Ministry of Health, I hate you all!
Okay, so you might think hate is a pretty strong word, and maybe I don’t hate them, but I am very, very, very angry with all of them. There are very few perks to having diabetes. Sure I was able to get out of class by feigning low blood sugars and if I didn’t want to run around the track (which was pretty much always) I could get out of that too, but once I was out of school, what few perks there were fast faded. I mean, it is a disease after all, it’s not supposed to be fun, right.
But there was one perk, a somewhat ultimate perk, to having this disease that made it a little more tolerable: Airmiles! On average I go to the pharmacy once every nine days and dole out anywhere from $75 to $350 with one swipe of my AmEx. A lot of money, yes, but also a lot of Airmiles. With Safeway’s seven times Airmiles on all pharmacy purchases, plus the bonus Airmiles I get by using my Airmiles-loving American Express, Mario and I have been living in the lap of Airmiles luxury. When we flew to Europe last fall, one of our flights was covered by Airmiles, and already we’re well on our way to having another European flight in our back pocket. Swell, right.
But things are about to change.
This morning when I picked up my latest pharmaceutical necessities I discovered, via a sign posted at the cashier, that “due to Ministry of Health requirements, Safeway will no longer be able to honour loyalty programs for any medicines covered by Pharmacare,” which means a significantly reduced amount of Airmiles going into my account! What???
The way Pharmacare in BC works is that a person has to spend so much money on their medicines, based on their income, before Pharmacare will kick in and offset the costs. Usually my costs start coming down around July or August. And it was great because even though I was no longer paying the full price for my prescriptions, I was still getting the full amount of Airmiles – a nice little perk indeed. But nooooooo, once again we disease-laden people are getting screwed. Because it’s not bad enough we already have a bloody disease! Thanks jerkfaces!
On a much happier note, it was my Grams 80th birthday yesterday! Happy birthday Grams!
And it’s my big, big brother’s 40th birthday today! Happy Birthday Big, Big Brother – you’re getting old 😉
Dear Big, Big Brother, I’m sorry that bi-polar goalie of ours did not get the memo that the best present EVER would have been to win the cup … I agree, he’s a jerk!