Life's not-so-little ironies...
This should be short. But there are a couple of things bubbling around in the back of my head that I want to get out, and this seems to be the place for it (or, at least, the best place I've got access to.)
First--
I was put in mind for this because I spent all day today helping load in and assemble a set for 'The Full Monty.' And, at one point during the day, as the TD was discussing (read 'bitching about') the set with the load-in foreman, I suddenly realized something.
I lost track of how many times, while I was taking theater classes, I heard the term 'collaborative art form'. It really is. If you stop and think about it, a playwright comes up with a script, which is utterly dependent on actors to play the parts, or it's just another document. Actors are dependent on a script--of some sort--because they are primarily storytellers (my take, Kevin may disagree with me) and without a script, they have no story to tell. Both are reliant on directors and designers to help breathe life into the whole thing. No one person in the production would have a job if it were not for the labors of all the others (or, at least, not the job they're currently doing).
Yet, it seems like 90% of the designers I've ever worked with seem convinced that the show is all about being a showcase for their design. Set designers come up with plans that utterly transform the entire theater...but also make it impossible for the lighting designer to use the lighting positions to best effect...and pretty much screw up any chance a sound designer has of ever being satisfied with the acoustics. Makeup designers pitch fits when the lights are too dim during what is supposed to be a creepy moment...because nobody can see the makeup (yes, they can, your audience isn't blind!!!) Costume and lighting designers have knock-down-drag-outs over whether the color of the gel or the color of the costume should change if something looks funny under stage lights.
I think all designers should be required to study one more art--the art of compromise. It would make the overall experience so much more pleasant for everyone involved...and, in the long run, be a lot more cost-effective, too.
Second--
I saw an article a couple of days ago that I found somewhat unsettling. The American College of Physicians has started pushing for a major overhaul of how Medicare works, because the system has become so unwieldy that medical students are choosing to become specialists, and America is retiring General Practicioners (the primary source of most health care in the American system) faster than new ones are graduating from med school. The ACP predicts that, given current trends, it is only a matter of time before the entire Primary Care system collapses.
What does Medicare have to do with this? Well, one representative of the ACP pointed out this problem...
Speaking as someone who is among those oft-cited statistics about Americans without health insurance, I worry that the day will come when the only option I'll have for health care will be the emergency room...because the way things seem to be going, it will take being wheeled in on a gurney, with three IVs and someone performing CPR, before my hypothetical insurance company would pay for the trip.
How did we get to the point where insurance companies consider it more cost-effective to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for hospital care, than to pay a few hundred dollars for the medication and treatments to prevent the need for the hospital?
So, yeah...if you're going to get sick, do it big. Or prepare to be broke, as well as miserably ill.
This should be short. But there are a couple of things bubbling around in the back of my head that I want to get out, and this seems to be the place for it (or, at least, the best place I've got access to.)
First--
I was put in mind for this because I spent all day today helping load in and assemble a set for 'The Full Monty.' And, at one point during the day, as the TD was discussing (read 'bitching about') the set with the load-in foreman, I suddenly realized something.
I lost track of how many times, while I was taking theater classes, I heard the term 'collaborative art form'. It really is. If you stop and think about it, a playwright comes up with a script, which is utterly dependent on actors to play the parts, or it's just another document. Actors are dependent on a script--of some sort--because they are primarily storytellers (my take, Kevin may disagree with me) and without a script, they have no story to tell. Both are reliant on directors and designers to help breathe life into the whole thing. No one person in the production would have a job if it were not for the labors of all the others (or, at least, not the job they're currently doing).
Yet, it seems like 90% of the designers I've ever worked with seem convinced that the show is all about being a showcase for their design. Set designers come up with plans that utterly transform the entire theater...but also make it impossible for the lighting designer to use the lighting positions to best effect...and pretty much screw up any chance a sound designer has of ever being satisfied with the acoustics. Makeup designers pitch fits when the lights are too dim during what is supposed to be a creepy moment...because nobody can see the makeup (yes, they can, your audience isn't blind!!!) Costume and lighting designers have knock-down-drag-outs over whether the color of the gel or the color of the costume should change if something looks funny under stage lights.
I think all designers should be required to study one more art--the art of compromise. It would make the overall experience so much more pleasant for everyone involved...and, in the long run, be a lot more cost-effective, too.
Second--
I saw an article a couple of days ago that I found somewhat unsettling. The American College of Physicians has started pushing for a major overhaul of how Medicare works, because the system has become so unwieldy that medical students are choosing to become specialists, and America is retiring General Practicioners (the primary source of most health care in the American system) faster than new ones are graduating from med school. The ACP predicts that, given current trends, it is only a matter of time before the entire Primary Care system collapses.
What does Medicare have to do with this? Well, one representative of the ACP pointed out this problem...
GP's are earning less, having to pay more for education, facing higher repayments for student loans, battling skyrocketing insurance rates...and on top of that, they are dealing with a health insurance system that is so tightfisted that they don't want to pay for anything that isn't life-threatening. But it's a GP's job to keep problems from becoming life-threatening in the first place."Medicare will pay tens of thousands of dollars ... for a limb amputation on a diabetic patient, but virtually nothing to the primary care physician for keeping the patient's diabetes under control," said Bob Doherty, senior vice president for the ACP.
Speaking as someone who is among those oft-cited statistics about Americans without health insurance, I worry that the day will come when the only option I'll have for health care will be the emergency room...because the way things seem to be going, it will take being wheeled in on a gurney, with three IVs and someone performing CPR, before my hypothetical insurance company would pay for the trip.
How did we get to the point where insurance companies consider it more cost-effective to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for hospital care, than to pay a few hundred dollars for the medication and treatments to prevent the need for the hospital?
So, yeah...if you're going to get sick, do it big. Or prepare to be broke, as well as miserably ill.
posted by Curtis at 12:53 AM
4 Comments:
Yeah, I don't get that?
Some insurances are the same.
They'll pay for the catostrophic events but not minor ones helping to avoid the catostrophic ones.
I agree on both points, the theatre one and the health issue.
As for the theater one, I think it would help immensely if the teachers would actually work professionally and have some real deadlines and cost realities in front of them. As it is now, they mostly play in their own sandbox.
I hear politicians and a lot of sheep-like right-wingers trashing Canada's system but every Candadian I've talked to raves about it. Europeans have the best health care and pay very little. Eventually, we'll have to go that way. Sooner is better than later.
I lived in Sweden for two years...actually had to go to the hospital once, because of a stress injury to my knees. You know what it cost me (a foreigner, without insurance, and no doctor of my own?)
$10 (or the equivalent at the time.) Swedes pay what we would consider insanely high taxes...but they don't have to pay for corrupt insurance companies that are bankrupting the medical industry there. And this was a NICE hospital. Much as I love America, I think we've REALLY missed the boat on that one.
you should talk to my buddy tom about canada's health care system, or have him talk to his father. he actually had medical ethics as his undergrad emphasis, and his father (Dr. Sherlock in the Philosophy Dept. at U.S.U.). he has some knowledge of canada's health care system and his response when asked "IT'S AWESOME!" of course the few conservative (insanely conservative) friends i have don't believe that sentiment, and seem to refuse the idea that more and better research is being done over seas and in canada then is being done here... even when provided with evidence.
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