I believe that it is a safe assumption that everyone sits around and asks their brain questions like: “Why do they do it that way?” or “That doesn’t make sense!” I know that I do. For example, did you ever wonder about the length of prescriptions? Wondering about it has some merit. Look at this way, your doctor gives you a prescription to cure something or other. He gives you a three-month prescription which turns out to be 90 pills. If you stay sick or whatever, he will give you more prescriptions so that after 4 of them you have used 360 pills. The problem is that there are 365 days in a year. If you are going to use the dumb pills for a year, why can’t you be given prescriptions that total a year’s worth?
What happens under the present system is that you are short five pills. Big deal you say, but health insurance companies count prescriptions. Thus, in order to pick up those elusive 5 pills you normally obtain another prescription of 90 pills. After five years you are short 25 pills and in the sixth year you are behind a whole month – or more with leap years. If you have to take an expensive pill, you can hit the doughnut hole in some prescription plans and your 90-day prescription price zooms up. If I were a complaining person, I would contact my Congressman. Actually, that might not be a bad idea as the namesake of my Congressman dealt with the devil according to what I read in my high school literature. So, the present one could probably handle my complaint. Nah, he is going to have enough problems when Congress meets again. I will let him alone!
You also have to wonder about firms that sell canned food. Why, as they did a few years ago, decide to mess with the minds of those who cook? I refer to the fact that many people like The Blonde in the House have favorite recipes that they love to prepare. Many of her recipes call for a 16-ounce can of an ingredient. As you know most manufacturers have assigned such cans to the museum category. They now put out 15-ounce or even 14.5-ounce cans instead. The rational given out was that they did not want to raise the price of a can of their product so they put less in the can. Of course, they ignored the fact that paying the same for less is an increase. In addition, not long after the price often crept up too.
Aside from price, there was as mentioned above the problem of making a beloved recipe with cans that no longer supply the proper amount. Do you make the recipe 1/16th smaller? (Try that some time) Or do you buy two cans and then scoop an ounce out of the second can to make up the difference? If you are somehow successful on scooping out the extra ounce, what do you do with a can that still has 14 ounces in it? Do you save it for the next time you make the recipe? Do you perhaps take the option of a recipe that is 1/8th smaller? I realize that there are many options that one can take, but I still am of the belief that keeping with the 16 ounce cans would have made everyone’s life easier.
Therefore, it still remains a mystery to me as to why manufacturers would mess with their customers’ mind. I guess they may have just looked at what the prescription industry was doing and a light bulb went off in their little minds. They said, “Hey, less is good! Let’s put a twist on that in what we put in cans!” And they did!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com.
