I certainly relate to the dance stories, but in my
opinion, it ought to be self-evident that pretty much any
activity has stuff you need to know if you're going to pursue
it seriously, and that means you have to read the material
provided, attend the orientations scheduled, ask questions
when something is unclear, and so forth.

Though on the otherhand, you are clearly very bright, it's entirely
possible that it being self-evident that questions need to be asked or
information obtained just isn't a place that a certain percentage of the
population is aware of, just because you know and I know doesn't make
Joe Bloggs understand that concept.

I am quite honestly stunned at what some people don't think of - there
was an article in the british news recently about how some ridiculous
proportion of cancer patients were going without food to pay for drugs,
which might not seem bizarre to an American where many pay full price or
percentages for drugs, but in the UK there is a universal prescription
system and if you pay, you pay a fixed rate (about 14 dollars), but
there is also a system where if you need more than 14 prescriptions in a
year you can get a prepayment card that covers everything for just under
100 pounds.

The reason why people were having to go without food to pay for drugs
was because they didn't know this system exists and if they did, that
they didn't have 100 pounds (which is quite reasonable) and didn't find
out that they could pay it 2 pounds a week over a year. The attitude of
many of the cases reported in the article was either that the they
should get free prescriptions or that they should have been told - but
how can you be told everything and it's quite possible that in the
attempt to communicate everything they were actually told it, I know
when I got to the point of needing the card, it wasn't a case of
thinking this is getting expensive are there any other options, more
realising I must be hitting the threshold and asking the pharmacist how
I got one and them handing over a form and a receipt so I could count
the cost of the ones I'd just paid for against it - obviously you don't
expect everyone to know everything, so a small percentage saying they
skipped food so they could pay for drugs wouldn't be a surprise, but the
number was 44% - that's almost half of cancer patients not being able to
find something out and act upon it that was as simple as asking the
pharmacist, finding an envelope and stamp, writing a cheque, or
providing bank details.

When the numbers are that big and I've done the process myself and have
no reason to suspect that it's suddenly changed and become a secret that
nobody tells you, you do start to wonder if something you think is
self-evident really isn't.

Cheers
Anne