In his quest to work out how the world works, my three-year-old grandson is always asking why. This got me to thinking.

Why, when we finally received cost-of-living increases in some Medicare rebates, were they not backdated to the time of the freeze, and concomitantly, why were other changes made that actually decreased our income to less than it was before the almighty adjustment? (For example, the location of my practice was reclassified, such that I could no longer use item number 10991 for bulk-billed consults — instead having to use 10990.) So I gained pennies from the cost-of-living adjustment for that year and lost dollars from the reclassification.