PT32.S4.Q19 - editorial: medical schools spend

AnthonyScalia

Hello, 7Sagers!

I'm a bit puzzled with this NA question and wanted to get your input on the matter.

This question states that medical schools are teaching curative medicine and preventative medicine at a 10:1 ratio respectively. It goes on to state that despite this, the use of preventative techniques lowers medical costs significantly.

The claim is that if medical school's have the goal of making medicine lower in cost, they aren't spending enough time teaching preventative medicine.

The correct necessary assumption is purportedly that the amount of time needed to teach preventative medicine thoroughly is greater than one hour for every ten currently being spent on the curative counterparts.

Now, a negation test should confirm this answer, but from my perspective, it does not. Negating the statement results in the time to teach preventative medicine thoroughly being equal or less than one hour for every 10 spent on curative. Now, I assume that at this point the LSAT wants you to assume that because the ratio now favors preventative being taught thoroughly, the argument falls apart because they're no longer spending insufficient time.

But who's to say that the ratio of time spent has anything to do with the actual time spent? The argument has to do with the actual time spent. In fact, we could only be sure that there isn't an insufficiency if we know for sure that the med schools are meeting or exceeding the total amount of hours needed for thorough teaching of curative medicine.

So what if we have a 10:Less-Than-One thoroughness need ratio ? Maybe the schools are teaching 1000 hours of Curative and 100 hours of Preventative, when students actually need 10,000 hours of Curative and 200 hours of Preventative to be thoroughly taught each respectively. (This would give us a 50:1 ratio of time needed for curative vs preventative thoroughness, congruent with the negation of the right answer, but still leaving the argument perfectly in tact.)

If the argument can easily be correct without the designated answer being negated, why can we call it a necessary assumption for the argument? The argument can be just fine without it being true.
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-32-section-4-question-19/