But taking the stairs is good for your health!
So today I was reading an article in which John McCain wrongly suggests that the health care plans of the Democrats would force poor people to wait for treatment--treatment that, if they were rich, they could get right now!
What I mean is this: suppose you were asked to choose between two different elevator schemes for the Cathedral of Learning.
System one offers equal access to the elevators--anyone can press a button the first or ground floor and then ride to whatever floor they want. (The actual elevators in the CL are more restrictive than this. Some floors are not accessible at all by elevator, and some are accessible only if you have a special key.) This system has the unfortunate consequence that one often has to wait five minutes or longer to get to one's destination, because of the high volume of elevator traffic.
System two restricts access to elevators based on one's status with the university. Let's say, undergraduates may use the elevators only up to the 5th floor, graduate students are not entitled to use them at all, and faculty may ride to a maximum floor that varies according to their specific title (there are 36 accessible floors in the building). Suppose also that rides above the 5th floor are relatively routine even for undergrads and grad students (as is the case). This has the advantage of obliging many people to use the stairs to reach their destination, for all or part of the journey, which means that those who are entitled to ride the elevator as high as they need to go do not have to wait as long, as a consequence of decreased elevator traffic.
Which system would you choose? If you're having a hard time deciding, you might try John Rawls' trick of supposing that you don't know whether or not you might be a Pitt grad student, and suppose that grad students sometimes need to reach the 36th floor. Now the question reduces to, more or less, would you rather wait a while for an elevator, or climb the stairs up 36 floors?
Of course, McCain presents us with a false choice, because it just isn't true that a health care plan like those proposed by either remaining Democratic candidate will necessarily result in wait times for routine care for the poor. But even if it was, that doesn't seem to be a reason to prefer the status quo!
My friends, they don’t work, they’re inefficient, and they end up in a two-tiered system where the wealthiest can afford to pay for their own health care and those with low income sometimes wait six or eight months for a routine kind of treatment.Last night I was reading a New Yorker article about elevators. Having had a lot of experience waiting for elevators in the Cathedral of Learning, which definitely does not live up to the wait times elevator engineers are supposed to aim for according to the article, I immediately saw an analogy that helpfully illuminates what's wrong with McCain's preferred system of health care access (i.e., one in which the poor simply can't afford health care without bankrupting themselves).
What I mean is this: suppose you were asked to choose between two different elevator schemes for the Cathedral of Learning.
System one offers equal access to the elevators--anyone can press a button the first or ground floor and then ride to whatever floor they want. (The actual elevators in the CL are more restrictive than this. Some floors are not accessible at all by elevator, and some are accessible only if you have a special key.) This system has the unfortunate consequence that one often has to wait five minutes or longer to get to one's destination, because of the high volume of elevator traffic.
System two restricts access to elevators based on one's status with the university. Let's say, undergraduates may use the elevators only up to the 5th floor, graduate students are not entitled to use them at all, and faculty may ride to a maximum floor that varies according to their specific title (there are 36 accessible floors in the building). Suppose also that rides above the 5th floor are relatively routine even for undergrads and grad students (as is the case). This has the advantage of obliging many people to use the stairs to reach their destination, for all or part of the journey, which means that those who are entitled to ride the elevator as high as they need to go do not have to wait as long, as a consequence of decreased elevator traffic.
Which system would you choose? If you're having a hard time deciding, you might try John Rawls' trick of supposing that you don't know whether or not you might be a Pitt grad student, and suppose that grad students sometimes need to reach the 36th floor. Now the question reduces to, more or less, would you rather wait a while for an elevator, or climb the stairs up 36 floors?
Of course, McCain presents us with a false choice, because it just isn't true that a health care plan like those proposed by either remaining Democratic candidate will necessarily result in wait times for routine care for the poor. But even if it was, that doesn't seem to be a reason to prefer the status quo!
posted by gregates at 9:56 PM
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