Here's one Lisa sent to me about her medical;

Thought I would share my story about getting a medical - and my joys of the new user pays system.

I need to renew my class 1 medical - no big deal right... just a trip to the doc and an hour of being poked and prodded. Wrong! Turns out that since I turned 25 this year I’m in for the interesting one.

Blood tests, ECGs, Audio you name it. Now as I’m sure anyone in QLD already knows - we expect to be shafted by the health system. So when I found out that my medical was going to cost $210 PLUS tests I can admit I was hardly surprised. However, what did surprise me was that CASA have now decided to get in on the action and charge $130 to "review and issue the renewed medical certificate". On further reading, I find that their justification for such a charge is based on an "hourly rate" of $130. Wow - those admin staff at CASA must be living the high life on over $200K per year to print a piece of paper and lick stamps – one per hour.... That means that my medical is going to cost me the grand sum of $460! Enough to give anyone a heart attack and fail the ECG...

I can’t help wondering if the people that they consulted when drafting their fees (oh yes - a wide range of aviation personnel were surveyed in making up the fee schedule) were all from the Qantas captains club (the only people I can think of who would think $130 per hour is the going rate). Especially when they have to do the very arduous task of printing a piece of paper saying "nothings changed, you are still healthy"!

And here I thought CASA was tasked with "promoting aviation".... silly me.

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