health savings accounts

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health savings accounts

by sameerballani » Tue Jul 05, 2011 12:51 am
Advocates insist that health savings accounts are an efficient method to reduce medical expenses. However, widespread adoption of these accounts will soon undermine the public's health. One reason for this is that most people will be reluctant to deplete their accounts to pay for regular preventive examinations, so that in many cases a serious illness will go undetected until it is far advanced. Another reason is that poor people, who will not be able to afford health savings accounts, will no longer receive vaccinations against infectious diseases.

The statements above, if true, most support which of the following?
A)Wealthy individuals will not be affected negatively by health savings accounts.
B)Private health insurance will no longer be available.
C)Most diseases are detected during regular preventive examinations.
D)Some people without health savings accounts are likely to contract infectious diseases.
E)The causal relationship between an individual's health and that person's medical care has been adequately documented.

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Please discuss reasons to eliminate wrong choices.

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by Geva@EconomistGMAT » Tue Jul 05, 2011 1:20 am
Responding to a PM. See my post here

https://www.beatthegmat.com/health-savin ... 83994.html
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by sameerballani » Tue Jul 05, 2011 3:16 am
I got an idea of what you are trying to say.
just to clarify/confirm. C is wrong because in the argument it talks about "many cases" and "serious illnesses", but it concludes about "most diseases". This is fishy. I mean it is possible that there are various cases of say 2/3 illnesses out of 100. In such a case we can't conclude that MOST of the diseases will go undetected. AM I CORRECT ON THIS?

But you say
The reason C is dangerous because it has the ring of truth as an assumption - in order to predict that people if people will not use preventative examinations, diseases will go unnoticed, we have to assume that preventative exams actually do detect diseases. But that is an assumption behind the argument, not a conclusion reached based on the argument
My point is that in the argument it itself says that many people will skip regular checkups,and so that in many cases a serious illness will go undetected until it is far advanced.
I know in this it is saying A is followed by B, but then it is not necessary A caused B[Reasoning used in AWA]
Still i am unable to get clear picture. If you could elaborate please.

Also, I am unable to understand why D is the correct answer.

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Geva@MasterGMAT wrote:Responding to a PM. See my post here

https://www.beatthegmat.com/health-savin ... 83994.html

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by sl750 » Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:11 am
Choice D is correct as it states in the prompt that poor people who cannot afford health accounts will not receive the vaccinations necessary to prevent infectious diseases

choice C even if correct doesn't support the argument that widespread adoption of health saving accounts will undermine the public's health

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by Geva@EconomistGMAT » Wed Jul 06, 2011 3:20 am
sameerballani wrote:I got an idea of what you are trying to say.
just to clarify/confirm. C is wrong because in the argument it talks about "many cases" and "serious illnesses", but it concludes about "most diseases". This is fishy. I mean it is possible that there are various cases of say 2/3 illnesses out of 100. In such a case we can't conclude that MOST of the diseases will go undetected. AM I CORRECT ON THIS?

yes.

But you say
The reason C is dangerous because it has the ring of truth as an assumption - in order to predict that people if people will not use preventative examinations, diseases will go unnoticed, we have to assume that preventative exams actually do detect diseases. But that is an assumption behind the argument, not a conclusion reached based on the argument
My point is that in the argument it itself says that many people will skip regular checkups,and so that in many cases a serious illness will go undetected until it is far advanced.
I know in this it is saying A is followed by B, but then it is not necessary A caused B[Reasoning used in AWA]
Still i am unable to get clear picture. If you could elaborate please.

Think of the following argument: If you skip a checkup, the disease will go undetected. So you better do the checkup to detect the disease.

That final conclusion requires an assumption - that the checkup actually is effective in detecting the disease. All I know is that If I skip a checkup, I won't detect the disease - I don't know that if I go for the checkup, I will definitely detect the disease.

This is sort of what the argument is doing: it says that if people have savings accounts, they won't go for checkups, and the diseases will go undetected. Up until that point - fair enough, no arguments. But if you then want to reach the conclusion that therefore the savings account will undermine public health, then I have a problem - I assume that the checkup are effective in the first place, so not doing them will indeed be bad for you. If, in a hypothetical example, all of these preventative examinations never detect anything, then doing them or not changes nothing as far as public health is concerned. That's why C sounds like it's related - because it is an assumption linking between "people will not do examinations" to "this is bad for people's health". But it is completely unrelated to what we're trying to do here, which is find a conclusion that can be reached based only on the premises given.

It just hit me why people choose C here: from the premises in the argument, we can infer that THE AUTHOR thinks that examinations are effective - we learn that because he reaches the conclusion that savings accounts will undermine public health. But C is wrong because it states this in general terms, not as the author's opinion. If C had said "The author believes that examinations are effective in detecting diseases", then that wou;d've indeed been something supported by the premises above. But the fact that the author is RIGHT in his opinion is simply not supported by the statements.

Even then, C goes too far with "most" diseases - the author believes that diseases can be detected, so that not doing them is bad for you, but we cannot pin a number of a portion to this.



Also, I am unable to understand why D is the correct answer.

See Sl750's explanation above.

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Geva@MasterGMAT wrote:Responding to a PM. See my post here

https://www.beatthegmat.com/health-savin ... 83994.html
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by jaguar123 » Thu Jul 07, 2011 2:11 am
Can we assume "some people " in the choice D to be enough to make it a right answer.
1% of poor people, 60% of poor people. Kindly help how to tackle - words like some, few etc.

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by nguy » Thu Jul 07, 2011 2:29 am
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IMO D

I was able to filter down to C and D. I ruled out C because even though the stem says that "many cases a serious illness will go undetected," but that doesn't mean MOST of the cases are detected "during regular preventive examinations."