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So, we all jumped in our rental cars and dashed to the Jones Street Java House, where we packed into the kitchen waiting for the candidate.

One of the store's owners captured the absurdity of the whole thing when she snapped a selfie with the press throng as her backdrop.

Posted by Jones St Java House on Tuesday, April 14, 2015

When Hillary Clinton kicked off her campaign in Iowa, her team said she would be going small — intimate events, conversations in coffee shops with just a few people. That's easier said than done when the candidate is one of the world's most famous politicians.

When Clinton arrived, she walked up to the counter facing the tangle of reporters, who were really just a small share of those trying to cover her.

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Hillary Clinton meets her barrista. She ordered a chai tea, a caramel latte and a water. Tamara Keith/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Tamara Keith/NPR

Hillary Clinton meets her barrista. She ordered a chai tea, a caramel latte and a water.

Tamara Keith/NPR

She shook hands with a few unsuspecting customers, and then sat down to chat with three invited guests. And that's about the time the press pool was kicked out.

So I can't tell you if they had a deep discussion about policy, or if one of her guests asked about the personal e-mail server she used while secretary of state. For the campaign, the point was simply to show Clinton relaxed and comfortable, chatting with Iowans, and for Clinton to get a chance to sit back, relax and hear from Iowans.

It turns out the reporters weren't the only ones given decoy locations. The Democratic activists, whom Clinton met with in cafes around the state, weren't told they would be meeting with her until the last minute. They turned over their cell phones before being taken to the meetings.

Such was the game of cat and mouse that characterized Clinton's return to Iowa. This was the campaign's effort to keep things small — to do Iowa the Iowa way.

"In order to have somebody like Hillary Clinton, who is huge, to be able to do that with these intimate settings, they really had to really make some compromises," said Kathie Obradovich, a political columnist for the Des Moines Register. "And one of them was not really telling everyone exactly where she's going to be. One of them was severely restricting the number of people who are in these events."

Reporters flew in from all over the country and around the globe. But because her events were in small venues, many of those reporters were left outside. When the black van she calls Scooby pulled up to the back entrance (instead of the front) of Kirkwood Community College, reporters and photographers gave chase, as captured by MSNBC.

VIDEO: Reporters ran to get to close to Clinton as the Scooby Van approached her Iowa event https://t.co/7vqR31b6NN

— The Cycle (@thecyclemsnbc) April 14, 2015

It was comical. And embarrassing. Was that really the Iowa way?

Or was it like taking a gondola ride in the Venetian hotel in Vegas instead of Venice? To hear the people Clinton met with tell it, though, from the inside, it felt like the real deal. Yes, they were all hand-picked. But they weren't all supporters.

Before Clinton had even left the state, her campaign sent out images of front pages from all the local papers. And there she was with a cup of coffee smiling and chatting with Iowans.

The chase continues on Monday in New Hampshire. According to a campaign aide, Clinton will hold roundtable discussions and meet privately with elected officials and Democratic activists around the state. Luckily for the reporters giving chase, New Hampshire is a much smaller state.

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Political life is full of comeback stories, but few are quite as dramatic as the boomerang that Scottish nationalists have experienced over the last six months.

Last September, the Scottish National Party lost a vote on whether to break away from the United Kingdom.

Now, membership in the SNP has quadrupled, and that unexpected turn of events means that this party, dismissed as a loser last fall, could determine who becomes the next prime minister after British elections in a few weeks.

People who wanted Scotland to leave the U.K. had waited their whole life for last year's vote. Then the long, slow buildup to Scottish independence deflated with a massive whoosh as the nationalists learned that they had lost by 10 points.

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Sturgeon has delighted the audiences during a series of televised debates. Here, she is seen with British Prime Minister and Conservative leader David Cameron at the first, on April 2, after which newspapers hailed her as "Queen of Scotland" and "Surgin' Sturgeon." Ken McKay/ITV via Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ken McKay/ITV via Getty Images

Sturgeon has delighted the audiences during a series of televised debates. Here, she is seen with British Prime Minister and Conservative leader David Cameron at the first, on April 2, after which newspapers hailed her as "Queen of Scotland" and "Surgin' Sturgeon."

Ken McKay/ITV via Getty Images

The morning after the referendum, Edinburgh librarian Robyn Marsack looked to the future with a sigh and a note of hope.

"There's also a feeling that something has been unleashed that can't be held back now," she said. "It's out there."

At the time, that sounded like an attempt to put a positive spin on a painful defeat. Then thousands of new members started signing up for the Scottish National Party.

"It did come as a surprise," says political scientist Tony Travers of the London School of Economics. "I don't think any of the ever-present political pundits had predicted this."

"I think the reason it happened is that, clearly having voted to stay in the United Kingdom, the people of Scotland could signal that they were still very interested in degrees of freedom and autonomy, if not quite independence," he says.

For decades, the U.K. was dominated by two big parties: Labour and Conservatives. That's still true, but neither is expected to break 50 percent in next month's election. That leaves an opening for a small party to be kingmaker. And right now, the SNP is out-performing all the other small parties.

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Demonstrators march in Glasgow, Scotland, to call for the scrapping of Britain's Trident nuclear weapons program on April 4. Opposition to Trident is a cornerstone of the SNP's platform. Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images

Demonstrators march in Glasgow, Scotland, to call for the scrapping of Britain's Trident nuclear weapons program on April 4. Opposition to Trident is a cornerstone of the SNP's platform.

Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images

If they do as well as expected, the Scottish nationalists could pull the new government to the left. The party wants more spending on social services, and the SNP opposes Britain's nuclear weapons program, Trident.

"It's often asked of me, 'Is Trident a red line?' " party leader Nicola Sturgeon said in one recent debate, "Well here's my answer: You better believe Trident is a red line."

The audience roared. That's become typical of Sturgeon's performance in these debates. During one faceoff among seven leaders, people searched for her name more than any of the others. After the debate, the Daily Mail hailed Sturgeon as "Queen of Scotland," while the Belfast Telegraph ran the headline: "Surgin' Sturgeon." One of the most Googled questions during the debate was "Can I vote for the SNP?"

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It's a development that Charlie Jeffrey, a politics professor at Scotland's University of Edinburgh, calls "very interesting."

"A party which is Scottish and which can only stand in Scotland, [people asking], yeah, can we have some of that?" he says.

"It's a strange situation, isn't it?" he says, "When the party in the campaign that lost is now on such a political high."

Sturgeon has joked that her party climbed so fast, she might be experiencing altitude sickness. But her opponents have not let voters forget that the party was founded on a belief that Scotland should be an independent country.

People often referred to last year's independence referendum as a "once-in-a-generation" vote. Now that the SNP is on a rocket trajectory, many are wondering whether another vote could come much sooner.

Sturgeon recently brushed aside such speculation.

"A vote for the SNP in this election is not a vote for another referendum," she said. "It is a vote to make Scotland's voice heard much, much more loudly."

But then she said she wouldn't entirely rule out another Scottish independence vote, either.

In his home in Lahore, Pakistan, Saleem Khan holds up his late father's violin. There are no strings, the wood is scratched and the bridge is missing.

"There was a time when people used to come to Lahore from all over the world to hear its musicians," the 65-year-old violinist says in the new documentary, Song of Lahore. "Now we can't even find someone to repair our violins."

Pakistan's second largest city once had a booming film industry and a flourishing music scene. Classical musicians, with their tabla drums, violins and sitars, would perform on stage, in movies and in crowded markets.

Then in 1977, Pakistan's sixth president, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, banned live music altogether. That left classical musicians like Khan struggling to get by. Many of his fellow artists fell into poverty.

Today the ban has eased, but people mostly tune into pop music, says Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, an Oscar-winning filmmaker and journalist based in Karachi and a director of the film. Classical music in Pakistan has virtually died, she says.

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Saleem Khan, 65, teaches his grandson how to play the violin in their home in Lahore. Courtesy of Asad Faruqi hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Asad Faruqi

Saleem Khan, 65, teaches his grandson how to play the violin in their home in Lahore.

Courtesy of Asad Faruqi

But seven musicians in Lahore are trying to change that, one performance at a time. Obaid-Chinoy's film follows the musicians on their quest. The documentary premiers Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

The musicians are part of Sachal Studios Orchestra, a group of about 20 Lahore-based artists who fuse traditional Pakistani music with jazz. They work in a small rehearsal room in Sachal Studios, at the heart of the city. There, they create new songs and rehearse for concerts in effort to keep traditional music on the public's radar.

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Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, left, co-directed Song of Lahore with producer Andy Schocken, right. Courtesy of Wasif Arshad hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Wasif Arshad

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, left, co-directed Song of Lahore with producer Andy Schocken, right.

Courtesy of Wasif Arshad

When they started in the early 2000s, the ensemble went largely unnoticed. Then in 2014, they performed in New York City with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. This appearance earned them recognition in the global jazz scene. Since then they've been performing around the globe and in Pakistan.

The documentary zooms into each musician's personal life before their success. For example, Nijat Ali, 39, is tasked to take over as conductor of the ensemble when his father dies. Saleem Khan, the violinist, struggles to pass on his skills to his grandson before it's too late. And guitarist Asad Ali, 63, tries to make ends meet by playing guitar in a local pop band.

The biggest challenge, Obaid-Chinoy says, was getting them to open up. "The musicians are very proud," she tells Goats and Soda. "When I first began filming them, they hid how tough life was for them, and it took me a long time to pry that open."

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For the 36-year-old journalist, the three-year project hits close to home. "I grew up with my grandfather's stories of a very vibrant Pakistan, where on the streets [of Karachi] you would have bands playing," she says. "When I was young I would watch [the performances] on television. But when I was a teenager, all of that was lost, and I never experienced the appreciation that he did."

The film is co-directed by filmmaker Andy Schocken. He wants the video to show people in the West a different side of Pakistan. "Typically, people only see stories about terrorism and sectarian conflict," he says. "So it's important for us to show that there is a culture there worth preserving, and these are the people fighting for it."

Obaid-Chinoy remembers worrying if people would show up to the group's first free concert back in Pakistan. They had played sold-out shows in New York City, but could they fill a 1,000-seat auditorium in Lahore?

She took her cameramen outside just five minutes before doors opened. "As far as my eyes could see, there were hundreds and hundreds of people lining up — I mean a sea of people," she says. "That was when I said, 'Well, the musicians have come home.'"

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Got a high-deductible health plan? The kind that doesn't pay most medical bills until they exceed several thousand dollars? You're a foot soldier who's been drafted in the war against high health costs.

Companies that switch workers into high-deductible plans can reap enormous savings, consultants will tell you — and not just by making employees pay more. Total costs paid by everybody — employer, employee and insurance company — tend to fall in the first year or rise more slowly when consumers have more at stake at the health-care checkout counter whether or not they're making medically wise choices.

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Consumers with high deductibles sometimes skip procedures, think harder about getting treatment and shop for lower prices when they do seek care.

What nobody knows is whether such plans, also sold to individuals and families through the health law's online exchanges, will backfire. If people choose not to have important preventive care and end up needing an expensive hospital stay years later as a result, everybody is worse off.

A new study delivers cautiously optimistic results for employers and policymakers, if not for consumers paying a higher share of their own health care costs.

More U.S. Companies Switch To High Deductible Health Plans

Researchers led by Amelia Haviland at Carnegie Mellon University found that overall savings at companies introducing high-deductible plans lasted for up to three years afterwards. If there were any cost-related time bombs caused by forgone care, at least they didn't blow up by then.

"Three years out there consistently seems to be a reduction in total health care spending" at employers offering high-deductible plans, Haviland said in an interview. Although the study says nothing about what might happen after that, "this was interesting to us that it persists for this amount of time."

The savings were substantial: 5 percent on average for employers offering high-deductible plans compared with results at companies that didn't offer them. And that was for the whole company, whether or not all workers took the high-deductible option.

Shots - Health News

As Big Employers Pinch Pennies, Health Savings Accounts Take Off

The size of the study was impressive; it covered 13 million employees and dependents at 54 big companies. All savings were from reduced spending on pharmaceuticals and doctor visits and other outpatient care. There was no sign of what often happens when high-risk patients miss preventive care: spikes in emergency-room visits and hospital admissions.

The suits in human resources call this kind of coverage a "consumer-directed" health plan. It sounds less scary than the old name for coverage with huge deductibles: catastrophic health insurance.

But having consumers direct their own care also requires making sure they know enough to make smart choices. That means getting vaccines and skipping dubious procedures like an expensive MRI scan at the first sign of back pain.

"What happens five years or 10 years down the line when people develop more consequences of reducing high-value, necessary care?"

- Amelia Haviland

Not all employers are doing a terrific job. Most high-deductible plan members surveyed in a recent California study had no idea that preventive screenings, office visits and other important care required little or no out-of-pocket payment. One in five said they had avoided preventive care because of the cost.

"This evidence of persistent reductions in spending places even greater importance on developing evidence on how they are achieved," Kate Bundorf, a Stanford health economist not involved in the study, said of consumer-directed plans.

"Are consumers foregoing preventive care?" Bundorf asks. "Are they less adherent to [effective] medicine? Or are they reducing their use of low-value office visits and corresponding drugs or substituting to cheaper yet similarly effective prescribed drugs?"

Employers and consultants are trying to educate people about avoiding needless procedures and finding quality caregivers at better prices.

That might explain why the companies offering high-deductible plans saw such significant savings even though not all workers signed up, Haviland said. Even employees with traditional, lower-deductible plans may be using the shopping tools.

The study doesn't close the book on consumer-directed plans.

"What happens five years or 10 years down the line when people develop more consequences of reducing high-value, necessary care?" Haviland asked. Nobody knows.

And the study doesn't address a side effect of high-deductibles that doctors can't treat: pocketbook trauma. Consumer-directed plans, often paired with tax-favored health savings accounts, can require families to pay $5,000 or more per year in out-of-pocket costs.

Three people out of 5 with low incomes and half of those with moderate incomes told the Commonwealth Fund last year their deductibles are hard to afford.

As in all battles, the front-line infantry often makes the biggest sacrifice.

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