The Schrug

We’re planning a trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon next year. We’ll be renting a car in Las Vegas and seeing Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks on our way. I wanted to get a sense of drive times between Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim. I started with my go-to mapper, Google. Here’s the suggested route:

Start address: Bryce Canyon Lodge 63 Bryce Canyon National Pk Bryce Canyon, 84764
End address: Grand Canyon Lodge Grand Canyon North Rim, AZ 84720

Start at: Bryce Canyon Lodge 63 Bryce Canyon National Pk Bryce Canyon, 84764

1. Head northeast on UT-63 N toward N Camp Ground Rd – 3.8 mi
2. Turn left at UT-12 W – 13.6 mi
3. Turn left at US-89 S – 60.3 mi
4. Continue straight onto S 100 E – 0.7 mi
5. Continue onto US-89 Alt S  Entering Arizona – 36.2 mi
6. Turn right at Grand Canyon Hwy – 95 ft
7. Take the 1st left to stay on Grand Canyon Hwy – 0.1 mi
8. Turn right at AZ-67 S/Grand Canyon Hwy – 4.6 mi
9. Turn right toward Forest Service Rd 317 – 0.2 mi
10. Continue straight onto Forest Service Rd 317 – 1.9 mi
11. Continue onto Forest Service Rd 217 – 2.2 mi
12. Turn left – 0.4 mi
13. Turn right – 118 ft
14. Turn left – 0.3 mi
15. Turn right – 2.9 mi
16. Turn right toward Forest Service Rd 282 – 0.8 mi
17. Turn right at Forest Service Rd 282 – 1.0 mi
18. Turn left at Forest Service Rd 758 – 3.2 mi
19. Continue onto Forest Service Rd 462 – 5.5 mi
20. Continue onto Forest Service Rd 641 – 1.1 mi
21. Continue onto Forest Service Rd 462 – 3.6 mi
22. Turn left – 36 ft
23. Turn right – 3.2 mi
24. Turn left toward AZ-67 S – 2.9 mi
25. Turn right at AZ-67 S – 0.5 mi
26. Turn right toward Point Sublime Trail – 10.2 mi
27. Turn left at Point Sublime Trail – 5.8 mi
28. Continue onto Point Sublime – 2.5 mi
29. Continue onto Point Sublime Trail – 2.5 mi
30. Turn right toward AZ-67 S – 0.9 mi
31. Turn right at AZ-67 S  This road may be seasonally closed – 2.6 mi

Arrive at: Grand Canyon Lodge Grand Canyon North Rim, AZ 84720

Estimated time: 6 hours, 32 minutes.

I knew from the Park Service web site that all that Forest Service Road stuff was crap. I tried to adjust the route to stay on AZ-67, but I couldn’t get Google to go along. So I tried Bing instead. Their directions were slightly simpler.

1. Depart SR-63 4.5 mi

2. Turn left onto SR-12 13.6 mi 18 min

3. Turn left onto US-89 60.8 mi 1 hr 4 min

4. Keep straight onto US-89 Alt / SR-11 / 100 St E / S 100 E 36.7 mi 41 min

5. Turn right onto SR-67 / Grand Canyon Hwy 43.6 mi 55 min

Seasonal closure of road

6. Turn left onto road 0.1 mi

Seasonal closure of road

7. Arrive at Grand Canyon Lodge

Estimated time: 3 hours, 7 minutes.

The difference between the two mapping tools was that Bing correctly deduced that I was a grownup and could figure out that I shouldn’t drive on a road that’s closed for the winter. Google was so concerned about the possible road closure that it advised me to travel instead on Forest Service roads – which I’m betting are closed to private vehicles anyway. Google got so spooked about Route 67, in fact, that when I asked it to take me to North Rim, AZ, rather than to the lodge, it told me to take US 89 Alt South all the way from Jacob Lake to AZ Route 64 in Cameron.

The only thing I’ll say in Google’s defense is that they make their turn-by-turn directions a whole lot easier to paste into a blog.

Recommendation: next time you plan a drive, try Bing as well as Google. You may find your allegiances shifting.

Did you know this? I didn’t until Mike Capuano mentioned it during a debate for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts. The number of Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan reportedly hovers around 100. I’m not sure where Capuano is getting his estimate of Al Qaeda within the US borders, but it’s easy to believe that there are more than 100.

If President Obama expects any measurable public support for a troop increase in Afghanistan, he’d better have a good explanation for why our anti-terrorism strategy requires us to fight the Taliban as well as Al Qaeda. Right now the suggestion made by Capuano (and others, I’m sure) to focus on Pakistan rather than Afghanistan sounds pretty compelling.

If you’ve driven from New York to Boston via I-91, I-84, and I-90 on high-traffic days, you know that the delays getting onto I-90 (the Mass Pike) can be deadly. Last night, I found a pretty good work-around. Get off I-84 at exit 73 and get onto SR-190. Turn right onto SR-171, which becomes SR-197 in Massachusetts. Follow that through Webster, MA, as it turns into SR-12 (and watch for the poorly lit right turn sign on 12 at the intersection of South Main Street, North Main Street, and East Main Street). Finally, stay straight on SR-16, following the signs to I-395. Now just take I-395 north to I-290 and follow the signs to I-90.

If there were no traffic, taking this detour would increase the travel time from 29 to to 48 minutes. But the tie-ups getting onto the Pike from I-84 can easily exceed 20 minutes, and the psychological benefits of avoiding the stop-and-go are immeasurable.

Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009

Subject: Mayoral term limits

To: Mark.Ciommo@cityofboston.gov, John.R.Connolly@cityofboston.gov, Michael.F.Flaherty@cityofboston.gov, Stephen.Murphy@cityofboston.gov, Sam.Yoon@cityofboston.gov

Cc: Maureen.Feeney@cityofboston.gov

Today I received an e-mail from the Committee to Elect Sam Yoon suggesting that I contact you regarding term limits for the Mayor of Boston.

While I am a fan and supporter of Mr. Yoon, I believe he is wrong on this issue. Job experience is a good thing. Officeholders who enjoy popular support should not be removed simply so someone else can have a turn. I understand that our campaign system presents high barriers to entry for newcomers, but they are not impenetrably high. A mayor who truly abuses his or her power or whose decisions are bad for the city can and will be removed by the voters.

Had it not been for term limits, the man elected President of the United States in 2000 would likely have been Bill Clinton rather than George W. Bush. Enough said.

David Schrag

Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA) is running for the Senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy. One of his campaign strategies – a very cool one, if you ask me – is to hold teleconferences with potential voters. They’re like town hall meetings but without the signs and screaming. I’ve been in on two calls and both times I’ve entered the queue to ask a question, but I haven’t gotten picked yet. If I had been called, here’s what I would have said:

Congressman, a large part of what’s wrong with the United States is the Senate itself. There are 15 states with populations under 2,000,000. These states represent less than 10% of the country’s population, yet they have 30% of the vote in the Senate. Even worse, Senate rules and/or traditions grant enormous power to individual senators, either as committee chairs or as potential filibuster participants. So we’re in a situation where a Senator who was elected with under 200,000 votes can singlehandedly thwart the efforts of a President who was elected by 67,000,000. We can’t do anything about the disproportionate power of small states without changing the Constitution, but we should be able to do something about the Senate rules and procedures.

My first question is whether you have a problem with the way power in the Senate is distributed and manipulated. If not, why not? If so, what would you try to do about it?

There is a viral Facebook status update going around today:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

Let’s ignore the grammatical problems with this position and examine it on the merits.

“No one should die because [he or she] cannot afford health care.” By that reasoning, no one should die because he or she cannot afford nutritious food, clean water, adequate housing, or a safe neighborhood either. Anyone who thinks that U.S. citizenship is ever going to guarantee the supply of all those other necessities is as loony as the people talking about death panels today. Also, I might agree that no one should die because he or she can’t afford a $500 treatment that would extend his or her life by another 50 years. But what about a $5,000,000 treatment that would extend his or her life by another six months? Is it reasonable for any of us to expect someone else to subsidize that sort of extravagance?

“No one should go broke because [he or she gets] sick.” You certainly hate to see someone recover from an illness or injury only to have his or her life in shambles anyway as a result of the financial stress. But we also have to avoid moral hazards. Some say addiction is an illness. Are we ready to say that no one should go broke because he is addicted to drugs or gambling? And couldn’t we also say “no one should go broke because he or she is the victim of a crime?” And yet we hear no calls to establish mandatory insurance against Ponzi schemes, e-mail fraud, or insider trading.

I understand and applaud the sentiment behind the “no one should” slogans. However, advocates of health care reform must be held to the same rigorous standards as opponents of health care reform. If we’re going to ridicule their comments about mandatory abortions, rationing, and government-run health systems, we have to watch what we say and how we say it.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed District 9. But at the same time I couldn’t stop noticing all the bits of this film that reminded me of other films. The ones that occurred to me were:

1. 28 Weeks Later
2. The Fugitive
3. Black Hawk Down
4. E.T.
5. Alien
6. Iron Man
7. The Fly
8. Minority Report
9. Saving Private Ryan

And, of course, The Office.

What’d I miss?

I have just joined The Archimedes Movement, which was founded by John Kitzhaber, the ex-governor of Oregon. Please read their core documents.

• http://www.wecandobetter.org/statement-of-intent
• http://www.wecandobetter.org/principles
• http://www.wecandobetter.org/framework-for-a-new-health-system

Doesn’t everything they say simply make sense?

After watching countless TV ads for life insurance as a child, I finally went to my parents and asked “Do you have life insurance?” They assured me that they did. So I asked the natural follow-up: “Do I have life insurance?” They laughed. “Why would we need life insurance for you?” I was hurt. You see, I had misunderstood. The ads I was watching said “buy life insurance, because you might die.” So I reasoned that buying life insurance was a way to prevent death, and I was sad to find out that my life wasn’t worth the premiums.

I understand the concept of insurance better now than I did then, but the concept of health insurance is in some ways just as baffling to me today as life insurance was then. And I worry that what’s getting overlooked in the current debate about our health care system is just how peculiar the notion of health insurance is.

Think about all the things we normally insure and the hazards we normally insure them against. Usually we insure tangible items: houses, cars, boats, jewelry, etc. And we insure them against very unlikely events: fire, flood, theft, fraud, and so on. This kind of property insurance makes a lot of sense for everyone involved. The big winners, obviously, are people who make claims. They get back far more from the system than they put in. People who never make claims also win, though, because even though they are effectively throwing their money away, they are only out a fraction of what they might otherwise have lost, and they got to sleep better at night. Insurers win because they have very smart people calculating the odds of these unlikely events happening and how much each policy is worth. (For example, if a ring gets stolen, they have to pay whatever that ring was appraised for – not for “a new ring.”) So insurers have a pretty good idea of how much they are likely to pay out each year. Occasionally they encounter insurance fraud, but for the most part they can be assured that their policy holders will take reasonable precautions to prevent the losses from occurring in the first place.

Life and disability insurance are a little trickier because no one can objectively calculate the replacement value for a life or a career. To correct for this, life and disability insurance policies are written with defined benefits. For example, there might be a fixed amount awarded in case of accidental death, and someone who becomes disabled gets awarded a percentage of his or her previous salary. Again, there are instances of fraud (and murder), but generally speaking people would much prefer never to collect on these policies.

Now think about health insurance, and note how radically different “health” is from life, disability, and property:

• Everyone gets sick or injured eventually.
• Defined benefits are usually not part of the equation – certainly not as explicitly as they are with other types of insurance. Some health insurance policies have lifetime benefit limits, but no policies tell you in advance exactly how much will get paid out for every conceivable malady. The general proposition came to be “if you get sick or hurt, we’ll pay for you to get well.” (With the advent of managed care, that got amended: “And we’ll also pay to keep you from getting sick in the first place.”)
• Most people intentionally behave in ways that increase their need to “cash in” on their insurance policies. These behaviors range from things we generally frown upon, like smoking and overeating, to things that are commonly accepted in everyday life, like playing sports or driving a car, to things that are essential to society, like working in dangerous jobs or getting pregnant.

So the very building blocks of what makes the casualty insurance system work – unlikely hazards, defined benefits, and motivation by the insured to avoid claims – are all absent in the health insurance system.

Now add to that the fact that the health care services purchasing market is like no other and you have a real mess.

I was curious as to how this obviously silly idea of health insurance came about so I did a little poking around. There’s clearly enough here for a doctoral dissertation so I won’t attempt to provide “the answer” here. But if you’re interested in the history of health insurance, here are a few links to get you started.

• Timothy Noah, “A Short History of Health Care,” Slate.com, 2007 (this is a review of Sick by Jonathan Cohn)
• Melissa Thomasson, “Health Insurance in the United States,” Economic History Services
• Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, “The History of Health Care Costs and Health Insurance,” 2006

Any health care system that has “insurance” as its foundation is doomed to fail. The only solution as I see it is to define some package of health care services that every resident of this country is entitled to regardless of income, assets, age, medical condition, or any other factor. This package would include preventive measures like annual physicals and vaccinations but not gym memberships. It would include a reasonable standard of care for chronic conditions but not the latest, greatest, and most expensive treatments (even if those treatments were proven to prolong life). It would provide crutches but not million-dollar prosthetics. Most people, of course, would not want their care to limited to such a bare-bones package, and we could let the private sector figure out a way to provide supplemental benefits, like quicker access to a wider range of physicians, more expensive operations and drugs, private hospital rooms, and so on. Ideally the supplemental benefit system would expose the true costs of health care to the consumers and give them an incentive to spend conservatively.

In a system like this, rich people would live longer and more comfortably than poor people. Could we abide such a result? We do now.

I don’t know how long this will be the case, but there is a still photo from “The Flaming of the Shrew” as part of the photo gallery at the International Cringefest ‘09 web site right now. (The photo is the one that includes a crown and a sword. You can’t miss it.) “Shrew” opened on Monday and I’ll be seeing it for the first time tonight. Also featured is a photo from “The Mission,” a great short musical by my friend Kevin Bleau.

I saw last night’s CringeFest show as well and saw some good plays about bad plays, as well as a talented sound-effects comedian. The CringeFest runs through August 9, so check it out!