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Author
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Topic: Projectionists' complaint shared by nurses
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Michael West
Film Handler
Posts: 67
From: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Registered: Apr 2000
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posted 04-04-2003 10:21 PM
gerard and gordon yes, that is true but as an additional problem for us - and corporations and the public will agree - we are non-essential, nurses, firemen, police, emergency services and teachers are all essential (literally life and death services, and they can use these arguments to further their claims) we are not, and therefore, quite powerless. i think our plight is more liken to that of a "haut cuisin chef" being replaced by the "high volume output" of an inexperianced fast food team.
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
![](http://www.film-tech.com/ubbmembers/994.jpg)
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 04-05-2003 08:24 PM
This "dumbing down" seems to be taking a toll on doctors as well. In NY, Medicaid, a federally-funded but state administered program, was working very well, providing health care to low income people, especially children, after the kinks of its early days were worked out. It was non-profit, efficient and secure.
Then the Republican governor and mayor agreed to cut the program "to save funds," even though they never spent anywhere near the federal funds allocated for it. So they privatized the system, forcing NYS Medicaid patients into some 17 private health care plans in Manhattan alone. (There are well over 2,000 health care plans in the U.S.) Businessmen with no medical experience, seeking easy pickings, formed plans to enrich themselves and provided dividends to their investors. Most plans pay doctors "per capita", meaning $8 to $12 per month for names on a list, whether the patients show up or not. But their salesmen tell their card-holders they can have unlimited visits to their (chosen or assigned) doctor, and the doctor is on call 24/7/365! If the patient is sick, the doctor may have many visits during the month for the same monthly per-capita fee of $8-$12. Doctors prefer to be remunerated "fee for service," charging only for services rendered.
So the doctors are now called "providers", the insurance companies "vendors" and the term "doctor" or "physician" disappears. I had the salesperson of a "vendor" ship me a 24 pound carton of manuals, directories and forms for "America's largest HealthCare Vendor." When I learned the "provider" could only request "fee for service" after accepting 200 "capitation" patients, we quit the program. But since one cannot quit the program until after one year of signing the contract, our name remained in the directory and it took many letters and phone calls to divest ourselves of this annoyance. (By not removing the names of the "providers" who quit, these privatized boondoggles inflate their directories.)
Another "dumbing down" stroke was the authorizing of "Physician Assistants", a practitioner neither a doctor nor nurse. Originally designed to provide employment for veteran military medics, and to help alleviate the shortage of doctors, it has become a cheaper way for hospitals and clinics to staff their programs. [Theatre chains title their employees "assistant managers" to discourage the desire to form unions and to escape coverage by labor laws.]
In addition to projectionists, restaurant chefs, nurses and doctors, can anyone name any other craft, vocation or profession affected by this "dumbing down" phenomenon?
Gerard
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