Samsung - Organization Behavior Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Samsung - Organization Behavior - Essay Example The three dimensions of management are summarized to be technical, conceptual and human.is important for the managers to evolve meaningful solutions and techniques for resolution of complex management problems, by employing innovative technological solutions that provide answers to problems people and organizations are having. For achieving management success, it is important to understand the extent of involvement of human resources needed for the deployment of these resources. COMPANY AND HENRI PRINCIPLES Samsung International has applied the principles of Henri Fayol, the father of management. The Samsung International has split the workforce into certain segments and has achieved better production and quality work input. The practice of division of work has provided the employer with an opportunity of maximizing employee efforts. It is applicable to all work including research and technical applications. There are limitations to specialization which are determined has been determ ined by the application. The company has stressed the importance and role of the authority, and therefore the authority has the rights to give orders and the power to exact obedience. Samsung International has made a clear distinction between a manager's official authority deriving from office and personal authority created through individual personality, intelligence, and experience. The company has introduced certain rules and regulations to ensure that there exist obedience and respect between the firm and its employees.

On-site water Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

On-site water - Assignment Example In context of developing and underdeveloped nations it is often seen that public supply of water is impaired by structural problems emerging within the social fabric. In order to rectify such malfunctioning in water distribution system that the governance of a host of public resources has been transferred to the hands of the private sector. The public resources transferred to private hands also stands for the transfer of water resources. Water Resources though are economic goods also have social values. In the light of changing environment and population growth water resources needs not only to be properly managed but also to be effectively organized for bettering up of life standards. (Ocal & Dogan, n.d.) To understand the problems arising from the mismanagement of water resources the paper tries to focus on water distribution and supply management in context of developing economies like India. The Indian economy has the potential to be an agrarian economy. In the last few decades the development of agriculture has helped to make India self sufficient in terms of food grains. The development of agriculture in the country can mostly be attributed to the development of irrigation activities. Public demand for water is not only restricted to agricultural activities. Rather, it is observed that the demand for water in non-agricultural framework is increasing rapidly. The water-laden regions of India can be categorized into 19 essential drainage basins, according to their per capita water supply. The demand for water also is seen varying by the side of these riverbeds. A statistics reveal that the valley of river Indus and Ganga share 48 percent of the total population of India. The water drawn from these sources is mainly used for agricultural purposes. (Amarasinghe, N.D., p. 6). It is in this light that the paper tends to highlight on points like the trends of water usage, demand for

Power Relations In Diego Velazquezs Las Meninas English Literature Essay

Power Relations In Diego Velazquezs Las Meninas English Literature Essay The author of the painting Las Meninas (1656), Diego Velà ¡zquez (1599-1660) worked at the court of Philip IV, thus at the centre of the centralised power structure of one of the original nation-states of Early Modern Europe. Las Meninas has been argued both in Velà ¡zquez time and in ours to be his masterpiece. My purpose in this essay is to argue for an interpretation of this painting and its shaping by an exploration of power relations rather than by perspectival considerations. My interest in the present essay will be to analyse Las Meninas within the perspective of power relations, in an effort to provide an alternative reading to the literature based purely on the technical aspects of the painting. A lot has been written regarding the great unclearness that the painting Las Meninas seals, but, there is a question that we must acknowledge in presence of the visual intricacy of the painting, what indeed did Velà ¡zquez paint? I am not looking to provide the final answer to this question in this essay. However, I believe that by analysing Las Meninas within the perspective of power relations, I can contribute to the scholarship on Velà ¡zquez and provide an approach that can also contribute to the answer of this question. Las Meninas (fig. 1) (Spanish for The Maids of Honour) is an oil on canvas painting with 318 cm ÃÆ'- 276 cm. The setting is a large room and it has long been unclear whether the interior represented in the painting is real or imaginary. F. J. Sà ¡nchez Cantà ³n identified the room by the paintings in it as the main chamber of an apartment in the Alcà ¡zar of Madrid that had been occupied by Prince Baltazar Carlos before its assignment to Velà ¡zquez.  [2]  However, F. Ià ±iguez Almech was unable, when analysing the seventeenth-century plans of Alcà ¡zar, to identify any room that would correspond to the one in the painting, being possible that Velà ¡zquez did not depict any actual room.  [3]   Fig. 1. Diego Velà ¡zquez, Las Meninas, 1656, Museu Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Available from: Museu Nacional del Prado Galerà ­a On-Line (accessed 29 March 2010). The painting presents a composition distributed in well organised spatial structure that provides to the depicted room a sensation of realism, proximity and depth, being the composition concentric, with the Infanta Margarita Marà ­a de Austria as its focal point.  [4]  The depth of the painting is accentuated by the frames on the wall on the right, by the canvas on the left and by the two empty chandeliers on the ceiling. In addition, the painting combines discreet colours, providing harmony to the painting (white, grey and black of the attires with details in red, beige of the canvas, and again tones of black and grey in the non-illuminated parts of the room).  [5]   On the right of the room, one has an oblique view of the wall with apertures which seem to be windows that let light into the room. On the left, the view of the room is cut by a large canvas seen from the back. The painter himself, Diego Velà ¡zquez, is portrayed in front of this canvas with a paintbrush on his hand, who seems to have just stopped working on the canvas for a moment in order to gaze out his models. Velà ¡zquez was fifty-seven years old when he painted Las Meninas and depicted himself in it, but without wrinkles, white hair, or any other sign that could indicate his actual age. The canvas Velà ¡zquez is working on is not visible to the viewer. More or less to the centre of the canvas stands a little girl identified as the Infanta of Spain, Doà ±a Margarita Marà ­a de Austria, who also gazes out in the manner of a portrait, and around who the other figures gravitate . . . like planets of an intricate, subtly ordered system, and reflect her light.  [6]  She is s urrounded on both sides by two young women attendants (the meninas of the title), being the one on the left (Doà ±a Marà ­a Agustina Sarmiento de Sotomayor) kneeling at the feet of the Infanta and offering her a bà ºcaro in a tray, while the other on the right (Doà ±a Isabel de Velasco) inclines a bit to the Infanta and turns her glance outwards the canvas. To the right of this group, in the corner of the canvas, stand two dwarves of distorted appearance, also court attendants. The woman named Marà ­a Barbola gazes outwards, while the midget who steps on the dog is Nicolasico Pertusato. On a more distant plan is Doà ±a Marcela de Ulloa, lady of honour, who turns her head to address a man (escort for ladies of the court), who stands beside her and looks outwards. Some distance behind them is the rear wall of the room, which has a door where stands Don Josà © Nieto Velà ¡zquez, Aposentador of the Queen, also gazing outwards. To the left of Josà © Nieto, the King Philip IV and the Queen Marà ­a Ana de Austria are reflected in a mirror. Some of the figures in the painting present little problem of identification, namely Velà ¡zquez and the Infanta; the others are less obvious. This identification of the figures in the painting is based on Velà ¡zquez earliest biographer, Antonio Palomino, who named the figures in Las Meninas on the basis of the known population of the court in Book III of his Museu Pictà ³rico y Escala Óptica, which was first published in 1724.  [7]  Palomino also identifies the two paintings in the upper part of the back wall with the then current royal holdings: Minerva Punishing Arachne and Apollos Victory over Marsyas, both originally by Peter Paul Rubens.  [8]   The Infanta occupies the centre of the visual focus, together with the King and Queens reflection on the mirror and the painter. The superior half of the painting is occupied with lamps and spots of light that enter trough the openings on the right wall; there are shadows covering the back superior part of the wall. The scene is taken from an angle that closes itself in the right with an opening in the wall. In the left, in another diagonal plan, the painting that is being painted by Velà ¡zquez leaves the figures in second plan and cuts obliquely the space. In the back, the mirror and the door make allusion to unknown spaces, which together with the spatial configuration of the portrayed room open the painting to the exterior and pulls the viewer to inside of the composition. As Madlyn Millner Kahr points out, the mirror in the painting contributes its own special brand of magic. In Las Meninas it directs the observers attention to events going on outside the picture (the presence of the royal couple), which in turn brings the observer within the picture area.  [9]   On her article Velà ¡zquez and Las Meninas, Kahr divides the cast of characters with a wide range of ages and physical types into different groups.  [10]  One of these groups is the dog, the midget and the female dwarf. According to Kahr, these three characters form a group apart due to their position in space and their compositional unity.  [11]  The central group, as Kahr argues, stands behind them, being constituted by the Infanta and the two meninas. The painter, Doà ±a Marcela de Ulloa and the guardadamas forms another group; and the last group is composed by the Aposentador of the Queen standing in the stairs and by King Philip IV and Queen Marà ­a Ana reflected on the mirror.  [12]  Thus, Kahr divides the characters in groups of three. This division provides unity, coherence and structure to the painting, and by placing the group of the Infanta and the two meninas as the central one, Kahrs group division concurs with Palominos consideration that the painting is a portrait of the Infanta.  [13]  The light that enters the room by the right side wall apertures mainly illuminates the Infanta, Doà ±a Maria Agustina Sarmiento and partially the other menina, that are highlighted in relation to the darkness behind them, reinforcing the conception that Las Meninas is a portrait of the Infanta of Spain. Carl Justi also described Las Meninas as a portrait of the Infanta Margarita as the centre of a recurrent scene of the palace life.  [14]   Joel Snyder agrees that considering the painting as the portrait of the Infanta Margarita, as Palomino and Carl Justi do, is a movement in the correct direction, but it fails to explain the presence of all the other figures in it that compete for our attention.  [15]  Jonathan Brown states that the subject of the painting is no one in particular, but that the painting is a claim for the nobility of Velà ¡zquezs art.  [16]  However, Snyder points out: To suggest that Las Meninas is a demonstration of the nobility of painting and of its proper place in the liberal arts, as Jonathan Brown does, is to locate the interest of the painting in the conditions of its origination and in the means employed to produce the demonstration. This is surely interesting and, if correct, revealing; but, again, it does not bring us to terms with the subject of the painting with what the painting is tout ensemble.  [17]   Firstly, the tout ensemble of the painting may be explored individually (considering the power relations between each figure in the painting), in order to then identify the subject of the painting. In approaching this issue, one should agree that one can identify the presence of the centralised power in the painting Las Meninas. The power in this painting may be recognized in several aspects. There is in the painting two distinct social groups: the working class and the one that enjoys the labour of those who work. On the one hand, we have the painter, the maids, the lady of honour, the escort for ladies of the court, the Aposentador of the Queen, and the dwarfs represented; while, on the other hand, we have the aristocracy represented in the Infanta that occupies the centre of the painting and King Philip IV and Queen Marà ­a Ana de Austria reflected on the mirror. When one questions why Velà ¡zquez depicted himself together with all the members of the royal household, the answer may be that he wanted to indicate that he also belonged to this illustrious circle. Sira Dambe states that in Golden Age Spain, the art of painting, still relegated to the rank of craft, had not yet been accorded equal status with the higher arts, such as music or poetry.  [18]  Therefore, this painting may be seen as Velà ¡zquezs proclamation of . . . power and status as a creator.  [19]  The ecclesiastic power is also present in the cross of the Santiagos Order in the chest of the painter, which was not originally painted by Velà ¡zquez, being painted after the artists death by the Kings demand.  [20]  When analysing the Fable of Arachne and Las Meninas, Jonathan Brown states, [Velà ¡zquezs] claim for the nobility of his art are firmly embedded in these multi-layered works, and in Las Meninas the gentleman painter, stands confidently at the easel, bas king in the glory of the monarchs person. And on his breast, the vibrant red cross of Santiago marks the artist as a nobleman.  [21]   In addition, one can also identify the presence of the artistical power of the painter over the remaining figures due to the dominium of the artistic language, but at the same time, the artistic needs to obey to a superior power, and in this case, the kingship. This statement finds support on the royal couple pictured in the mirror that accordingly represent the royal power. On her article Picturing Power: Representation and Las Meninas, Amy M. Schmitter affirms: The Kings representation is a force of power, a manifestation of royal power that embodies, displays, and extends it. It is a representation that acts, that represents by presenting, exhibiting, or exposing titles and qualifications, by figuring them in painting, by being a sign, by bringing to observation, and by playing in public. It thereby constitutes its subject, the royal power and the royal office, by representing it.  [22]   One can agree that the depiction of the King Philip IV and the Queen Marà ­a Ana de Austria on the mirror and of the Infanta Margarita as main focus of the painting represents directly in the painting the royal power it represents those that should be looked with reverence and submission. Furthermore, with the glances one receives and returns in the painting, the represented royal power gazes with control and vigilance over everyone else. Regarding the power relations between the remaining figures of the painting, one can argue that the meninas, the guardadamas and the lady of honour, by their own social condition are subordinates of the kingship. The two dwarfs are also condemned to the royal power and have as their function to entertain the royal household. The dog that is being stepped by the dwarf on the right is condemned to an even lower position (a submissive animal). In this perspective of power relations, the presence of Josà © Nieto Velà ¡zquez becomes enigmatic. Despite being the Aposentador of the Queen and therefore ruled by the royal power, he is portrayed in profile on the stairs of the back door, seemingly indicating an indecision of staying under the gaze of the royal power or leaving. From this analysis, one can agree that all the figures of the painting are entangled in the webs of power. Although the delimitations of power are well defined in the painting, representing the historical, political and economic conditions of seventeenth-century Spain, another way of looking at this issue is through the indirect allusions also present in the painting, such as the dwarf, positioned in perfect diagonal alignment with the painter. The two associate by contrast: the painter as the creator and admirer of what is beautiful, and the dwarf as symbol of deformity. In common, there is the fact that both are represented images of social groups placed aside from power. One should, nevertheless, consider this opposition from another angle. From the contrast itself between what the painter and the dwarf represent, one can obtain an exchange of parts by acknowledging that the arts represent both the sublime as well as the grotesque. Therefore, there is in this aesthetical inscription a subversion of the institutionalised values of power. The power of kingship is also central in Michel Foucaults chapter on Diego Velà ¡zquezs Las Meninas, being this the opening chapter of his book The Order of Things.  [23]  According to Foucault the function of the mirror reflection of the King and the Queen is to bring to the painting what is external to it. In the chapter Las Meninas, Foucault attributes the theme of the painting to the external space and gives the Infanta and her maids (internal space) the function of entertaining the King and Queen that are in front of the representation (outside space) as Và ©lazquezs models.  [24]   Foucaults critical analysis derives from the observation angle of the Infanta, the King and Queen in the mirror and how their gazes define the centre of the picture. The mirror in the back leads to the conclusion, as Foucault states, that it is about a question of what looks and what is looked. From these encounters of gazes and perceptions, the author notes that the notion of double arises from this painting. To Foucault the double reveals itself in the painting from inside the painting itself. The painting that Velà ¡zquez is painting in the portrait will be the representation of the reflexion of the King and Queen in the mirror at the back.  [25]   On the chapter dedicated to Las Meninas, Foucault argues that the Classical age, roughly the period from the seventeenth-century to the eighteenth-century, was a period when the intellectual world focused on the representations of the real. Accordingly, Foucault defines the subject of Las Meninas as the representation itself. To quote from Foucault: Perhaps there exists, in this painting by Velà ¡zquez, the representation as it were of Classical representation, and the definition of space it opens up to us . . . But there, in the midst of this dispersion which is simultaneously grouping together and spreading out before us, indicated compellingly from every side, is an essential void: the necessary disappearance of that which is its foundation of the person it resembles and the person whose eyes it is only a resemblance. This very subject which is the same has been elided. And representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form.  [26]   Therefore, Foucault argues that in Las Meninas representation tries to interpretate itself. In contemporaneous philosophy, it is the language that is going to establish the relation between the similarities with the world, making possible representation. Thus, one can affirm that the turning point from classic epistà ªmà ª to modern epistà ªmà ª is the passage of language as mediator (in representation) to object of knowledge. In the modern epistà ªmà ª, language does not reveal more directly the identity of the world, but it reveals the relations between things and the Man. It is from here that occurs the questioning of Man as centre around whom all the knowledge is created. Thus, Velà ¡zquez painting represents what is to come. The modern epistà ªmà ª is anticipated in Velà ¡zquezs Las Meninas it is the utopic function of art of anticipating the future. Consequently, to Foucault, Las Meninas is represented in an epistemic system the subject of representation should rema in invisible (the empty space of the kingship is the place that in the modern episteme will be occupied by the Man). Foucault points out: At once object since it is what the artist is copying onto his canvas and subject since what the painter had in front of his eyes, as he represented himself in the course of work, was himself, since the gazes portrayed in the picture are all directed toward the fictitious position occupied by the royal personage, which is also the painters real place, since the occupier of that ambiguous place, in which the painter and the sovereign alternate, in never-ending flicker, as it were, is the spectator, whose gaze transforms the painting into object, the pure representation of that essential absence.  [27]   Moreover, Foucault argues that the mirror portrayed in Las Meninas portrays the confrontation between representation and reflexion, being that a painting is different from a mirror and a representation goes beyond a reflexion. Therefore, the painting is a representation for the observer, and in the painting of Velà ¡zquez one has the painting itself, and inside it one has other represented paintings and also a canvas in first plan viewed from the back. In all, this painting is a representation that has as subject a kind of empty place that we can fill with several models. Foucault argues that instead of instituting a simple relation of mimesis as the main theme of the painting, the figures of the royal couple would be indicated as a kind of essential emptiness.  [28]   According to Foucault, the canvas on the left is the place for a dichotomy between visible/invisible. What the painter looks is doubly invisible, because it is not represented in the painting, and because we cannot see ourselves. The mirror in the back is the only visible representation, but despite that fact, no one looks at it. However, what is there represented, has nothing to do with what the painting presents, it reflects something that is exterior to the painting. In the place occupied by the spectator, are the models of the painter. Therefore, the painting allows to see what is doubly invisible. The characters in the mirror are the less noticed, but it is around them that all the representation happens. It is to them that all the other characters look gazing outwards the painting.  [29]  Thus, there are three looks that meet on the outside of the painting: of the model, in the moment he is being painted, of the spectator that contemplates the scene, and of the painter in the moment he paints the painting (the one in front of us, and not the one represented in the painting). Quoting from Foucaults The Order of Things: Of all the figures represented before us, they [the royals] are also the most ignored, since no one is paying the slightest attention to that reflection [in the mirror] which has slipped into the room behind them all, silently occupying its unsuspected space; in so far as they are visible, they are the frailest and the most distant form of all reality. Inversely, in so far as they stand outside the picture and are therefore withdrawn from it in an essential invisibility, they provide the centre around which the entire representation is ordered: it is they who are being faced, it is towards them that everyone is turned . . . from the canvas with its back to us to the Infanta, and from the Infanta to the dwarf playing on the extreme right, there runs a curve . . . that orders the whole arrangement of the picture to their gaze and thus makes apparent the true centre of the composition, to which the Infantas gaze and the image in the mirror are both finally subject.  [30]   One should note here that Foucaults theory emphasises the interior look it constitutes the interior from the exterior as a device built from the outside to the inside of the webs of power. Las Meninas, in Foucaults interpretation help us see this paradigm. By observing the painting, it is noticeable that the modern subject is constituted by surveillance, by the absent look (but at the same time very present), of a power that determines everything, from the characters clothing, gestures, attention, social position, in sum the ways of feeling and seeing are determined by a power that sees all and controls all. In view of these arguments, Foucault points out: In the profound upheaval of such an archaeological mutation, man appears in his ambiguous position as an object of knowledge and as a subject that knows: enslaved sovereign, observed spectator, he appears in the place belonging to the king, which was assigned to him in advance by Las Meninas, but from which his real presence has for long been excluded.  [31]   On his article Velà ¡zquez Las Meninas, Leo Steinberg presents similar arguments to Foucaults, including the viewers of the painting as part of a sphere which the partitioning picture plane cuts in two.  [32]  As Steinberg points out, if the picture were speaking instead of flashing, it would be saying: I see you seeing me I in you see myself seen see yourself being seen and so on beyond the reaches of the grammar.  [33]  What particularly interests me in Foucaults and Steinbergs approaches is the placing of the modern Man (in Foucaults case), and the observer (in Steinbergs case), as pivotal figures in the interpretation of Las Meninas, being that in their approaches the Man/observer holds the power he occupies the place of the royal power. To conclude, when one considers all these different approaches to Las Meninas, one is presented with a complex web of power relations. Firstly, the painting was produced in seventeenth-century Spain, a original nation-state of Early Modern Europe, and in and with the court of Philip IV the centre of a centralised power structure. Secondly, the painting depicts the royal power interiorly with the portrayal of the Infanta and the King and the Queen in the mirror, and at the same time exteriorly trough the implied presence of the royal couple reflected on the mirror. Thirdly, the painting also portrays all those ruled by the monarchic power, such as the maids of honour, the lady of honour, the guardadamas, the dwarfs, the Aposentador of the Queen, and also the painter. Fourthly, it also depicts Velà ¡zquezs proclamation of power by portraying himself in the royal household as a nobleman, and at the same time it celebrates his artistical power. Finally, the painting invisibly portrays the Man/observer that occupies the same place of the royal couple outside the painting, and that this way holds the power both as subject of representation and holder of knowledge. Therefore, one can conclude that what Velà ¡zquez did indeed paint in Las Meninas was power royal power, artistical power, and intellectual power. The setting and the figures of Las Meninas are merely incorporations of power relations, being the painting on his whole a metaphor of power.

Free Glass Menagerie Essays: Realism :: Glass Menagerie essays

The Realistic Feel of The Glass Menagerie Tom Williams in the play The Glass Menagerie writes about a time when his family struggles.   Many people can relate their problems one way or another with Williams.   Though the play had a very realistic feel to it, many people enjoy fairytale endings. The play is very well written, but I would change the ending.  Ã‚   The ending was depressing.  Ã‚   The whole family worked so hard on preparing for the gentleman caller.   Amanda, Tom's mother completely redecorated their home and picked out beautiful clothes for Laura and herself.   The whole play led up to this moment, of Laura meeting a nice gentleman caller.   Conveniently it was the boy she had a crush on all through high school.  Ã‚   Whom, she always fantasized about being with.   At first it seemed he was interested in her also.   They should have had him and Laura become romantically involved.   Eventually get married and have kids.   This would have been a much happier ending.   Not only would Laura be happy, but Amanda and Tom would be too.   Amanda would finally not have to worry about her daughter anymore, because she would be taken care of.   Tom would be happy because he too, would no longer have to worry about his sister.   This is more l ike a fairy tale ending, but it would have been much more interesting and inspiring if Laura did become married to the gentlemen caller.   Laura had such a rough time with her life, this would have given her hope that she never had. The entire play is a family struggling which can be compared to many of our own lives.   The play isn't fantasy like at all.   It is realistic, and that's what is good about it.   Tom was struggling to taking care of his mother and sister, which can be compared, to the way families live today.   Laura is disabled and very insecure of it.   Amanda is just like any mother, she tries hard to help her children have a secure future.   Another hardship for Tom and his family is that their father is no longer in the picture.   He abandoned the children at a very young age.   These examples can be compared to our own lives.   Instead of the play being about people with no problems, it's about "real people."   Everyone has problems and struggles, maybe not exactly as Tom's family does, but we can relate with similar problems.

Detailed semiotic analysis of a music video

The video that I am analysing is Simian mobile disco VS Justice – We Are Your Friends. The video belongs to the music genre of Electro / Psychedelic / Alternative. This genre's broad characteristics include DJ sets with crowds and bizarre storylines. The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals creates an idea of irony. For example the lyrics state We Are Your Friends, whilst simultaneously we view an individual experiencing a practical joke as a cat gets thrown at him whilst asleep. The relationship between the visuals and the music allows the cuts to be in time with the beat. There are no solo instrumental sections as the video is all-visual around the concept. The video also changes pace with the music; for example, through the build up there are less cuts and longer shots. This happens during the section 1:00 minute to 1:32 minutes. The use of the extraordinary concept of the video helps to sell this track, as it is recognisable and extravagant. Also the combination of the two artists justice and simian mobile disco combining, will have a considerable effect on the size of the audience. Throughout the video there is no appearance from the actual artists. However the audience can create an image of the artist after having watched the video. As the artists are combined they have not released any previous music videos together. The videos of simian mobile disco are however eccentric and unusual for example â€Å"Its The Beat† roughly matches the style of â€Å"We Are Your Friends†. There are no specific motifs followed on from other videos, as it is just a spontaneous video that is unrelated to any other work done by either Justice or Simian Mobile Disco. Even though I would not say that this brands them as achieving a new image, it can although be categorised with some previous work. As the artist does not appear in the video they cannot have been put on sexual display. Considering the other actors within the video there is also no use of sexual display by male or female individuals. There are no other factors within the video linking to the use of sexual display. This music video is approximately 90% concept based and 10% narrative based. This is because there is no performance and the whole video is shots of foolish tricks performed to recovering individuals. The narrative section is small and consists of the link between all the performers having being drunk the night before.

Consumer-Directed Health Care and The Disadvantaged

Writing from his aerie as a law professor at Georgetown, M. Gregg Bloche takes a dim view of high deductible coverage, tax-subsidized health savings accounts (HSA’s), recently added to the payment mix for health care in America.   He reasons that the poor and minorities (all too often one and the same) generally earn too little to set aside money in consumer-directed health plans (CDHP), they have imperfect information, they lack access to the best-quality health care, and they may well wind up subsidizing the inpatient costs of the middle and privileged classes.   The author suggests relieving the burden on the poor by providing them more lavish tax subsidies, charging well-off patients more for their health coverage, and giving the poor advantageous prices for â€Å"high-value† care.Where the Case for the â€Å"Disadvantaged† Falls ShortUltimately, Bloche rests his arguments on a shared philosophy of should’s and ought’s, that a civilized soci ety must ensure equal access to the best medical care.   This is a perilous stand, an ideal paradigm of social justice that has extremely elastic boundaries.   As a law teacher, Bloche is concerned chiefly with equity.   Taken to a logical conclusion, such a stand obligates health care leaders to provide addicts disposable needles as the Dutch do (and never mind if they do not want to enter a rehab facility), make injected opioid therapy freely available to heroine addicts (Britain), and permit legal abortion to teenagers without benefit of parental consent (U.S.).   In short, the author may be well-meaning but he presents his case in the realm of political and legal ideology.America has always stood for protection of the oppressed.   Given how minorities have suffered bias, prejudice and outright repression, Bloche argues, their poverty is not of their own making.   They should not be forced to pay for health care by digging into money they need for basic necessities: f ood, shelter, and utilities.   This argument is weak in three respects.First of all, the income disparities are not as wide a gulf as he makes them out to be.   In the 2005 Census, mainstream White households had median incomes of $49,000 (Census Bureau, 2006) compared to $34,000 for Hispanics and $30,000 for Blacks. But the real story is that the fastest-growing minority, Asians, recorded a median income exceeding $57,000.   Here is a minority that has endured prejudice and residential segregation too but has pulled itself up by its collective bootstraps in America.Second, African-Americans may be twice as likely to be unemployed (8%) as Caucasians (4%) but they are only slightly more prone to go â€Å"bare† where health insurance is concerned:In 2004, 55 percent of African-Americans in comparison to 78 percent for non-Hispanic Caucasians used employer-sponsored health insurance. Also in 2004, 24.6 percent of African-Americans in comparison to 7.9 percent of non-Hispan ic Caucasians relied on public health insurance. Finally, in 2006, 17.3 percent of African-Americans in comparison to 12 percent of non-Hispanic Caucasians were uninsured (Office of Minority Health, 2007).While conceding the fact that a good one-fourth of African-Americans rely on public health insurance, the comparable incidence is just 4 percent to 11 percent for Asians and this is notwithstanding the fact that some of the latter are unemployed or live below the poverty line.Third, Bloche also wears blinders in conveniently ignoring the fact that CDHP’s are only one element in the insurance or subsidy mix that include Medicare and Medicaid.   He argues for subsidies and tiering to favor the poor but, in conceding that these will probably not gain traction, he raises a straw man of despairing liberal ideology without offering a workable alternative.Hence, the flaw in his argument ensues: ignoring the fact that CDHP’s are voluntary.   In an analysis conducted at on e multi-choice firm, Greene et al. (2006) revealed that those who elected the high deductible CDHP (there was a low-deductible option) were healthier anyway and were better educated than those going with Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO).One concedes that the promise of marketplace reform in lieu of government-imposed restructuring dating from the Clinton presidency has not succeeded yet (Gordon & Kelly, 1999).   Health care costs continue to spiral out of control and there are quite simply not enough physicians and nurses to render meaningful, high-quality care all around.   And yet, Bloche as outsider can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing about the existence of charity wards (overcrowded through they are) and the fine coordinated care that goes on all the time in teaching hospitals.The latter quickly shows up on the bills of insured and paying patients but may proceed behind the scenes without indigent patients necessarily knowing about it.   For this is, in essence, the most humane of professions.   This is also why Bloche’s fear that those at the frontlines, in emergency and outpatient services, will refuse to at least inform indigent patients about high-value tests and treatments is refuted in daily practice.One can rely on the innate high empathy of medical practitioners to discern when patients decline care due to cost, and hence to counsel patients that certain â€Å"savings† may put them at risk (White, 2006).   In fact, access to high-value preventive care (for e.g., diabetics, the hypertensive, those at risk for stroke) has been addressed by HCA rules that explicitly mandate â€Å"first-dollar coverage† for preventive care.   This includes those needed for control of chronic disease (Baicker, Dow & Wolfson, 2007).That said, talent does go where the money is and paying or well-covered patients have readier access to diagnostic tests and therapies.   Until the government can budget the sums necessary to transf orm the healthcare system to a welfare state like the British NHS or the Nordic nation models, both White and minority citizens must earn their keep with the kind of hard work, business acumen and economic rewards needed to purchase adequate coverage.ReferencesBaicker, K., Dow, W. H. & Wolfson, J. (2007). Lowering the barriers to consumer-directed health care: Responding to concerns. Health Affairs, 26(5), 1328-32.Census Bureau (2006) 2005 census: Household incomes by race. Retrieved March 14, 2008 fromGreene, J., Hibbard, J.H., Dixon, A. & Tusler, M. (2006). Which consumers are ready for consumer-directed health plans? Journal of Consumer Policy, 29(3), 247-262.Gordon, C.G. & Kelly, S.K. (1999) Public relations expertise and organizational effectiveness: a study of U.S. hospitals. Journal of Public Relations Research 11, 143.Office of Minority Health (2007) Asian-American profile. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Retrieved March 14, 2008White, B. (2006). How consumer-driven health plans will affect your practice. Family Practice Management, 13(3), 71-8.