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by aditya8062 » Tue Mar 05, 2013 8:32 am
Although many elderly citizens believe they are entitled to healthcare benefits in their old age, some fiscally conservative officials are quick to point out that providing healthcare benefits costs far more than other retirement benefits

my 1st question :
can any instructor plz tell me why isn't the underlined portion of above mentioned sentence not parallel .
my contention is why cant we read this underlined portion in the form of ellipses as follows :providing health care benefits costs far more than providing other retirement benefits
kindly explain me why this kind of ellipses cannot be done on such a constrution

my second question :
the correct option for this question is :healthcare benefits cost far more to provide than other retirement benefits do
now i have a feeling that this correct option wud also have been correct had there been no helping verb "do" .i feel that in this particular sentence there is no ambiguity in the meaning without the helping verb "do" .kindly confirm if my logic is correct

thanks and regards
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by sana.noor » Tue Mar 05, 2013 9:10 am
providing healthcare benefits (participle) is compared with retirement benefits (noun)...how can these two be parallel?
however correct version compares healthcare benefits cost with others
"healthcare benefits Cost far more than others do"
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by aditya8062 » Tue Mar 05, 2013 10:20 am
To Sana
thanks for ur reply .but i guess u have not answered my doubt .i do understand that providing retirement benefits cannot be parallel to retirement benefits because providing health care benefits is a simple gerund (not particle as said by u)and retirement benefits is a noun. but what confuses me is the fact that why cant we view that sentence in terms of ellipses
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by sana.noor » Tue Mar 05, 2013 11:59 pm
My mistake..its gerund
the first part of the sentence is about "healthcare benefits" but the second half isnt about helathcare benefits (noun). it rather compares the cost of helathcare benefits with the cost of other retirement benefits
So the construction is "X cost far more than others DO"
"providing health care benefits costs far more than providing other retirement benefits" its right!
here the subject of the costs is "provding" and we need another providing after "far more than" for a clear comparison. "Providing (subject) X (noun) cost far more than providing (subject) y (noun)"
Last edited by sana.noor on Wed Mar 06, 2013 1:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by aditya8062 » Wed Mar 06, 2013 12:39 am
To sana
thanks again . i got ur point but i guess u r text does not answer my ellipses doubt .but i appreciate the correction that u made in ur statement .
thanks again and regards
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by sana.noor » Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:40 am
ellipses is when u remove any word without demaging the construction or meaning of the sentence. i told u without "do" its not giving clear meaning and without "providing" after "far more than" isnt a good comparison.
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by EducationAisle » Wed Mar 06, 2013 8:08 am
aditya8062 wrote: my 1st question :
my contention is why cant we read this underlined portion in the form of ellipses as follows :providing health care benefits costs far more than providing other retirement benefits
kindly explain me why this kind of ellipses cannot be done on such a constrution
Actually there is another thing we need to assume:

providing health care benefits costs far more than providing other retirement benefits costs
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by EducationAisle » Wed Mar 06, 2013 8:09 am
sana.noor wrote:providing healthcare benefits (participle) is compared with retirement benefits (noun)...how can these two be parallel?
providing is actually a gerund (Noun form) here.
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by aditya8062 » Wed Mar 06, 2013 8:54 am
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EducationAisle
u said and i quote :
EducationAisle : Actually there is another thing we need to assume:

providing health care benefits costs far more than providing other retirement benefits costs
i am sure we don't need that "costs" at the end .that will be taken care of by the ellipses .
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by EducationAisle » Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:23 am
Hi Aditya, it might be interesting to refer to #89 in OG12:

Dirt roads may evoke the bucolic simplicity of another century, but financially strained townships point out that dirt roads cost twice as much to maintain as paved roads do.

Unfortunately in the answer choices for this sentence, we don't have an option where everything else is the same except the do/cost towards the end.

However, it seems to me that if there is an option among the answer choices that does explicitly mention the verb (in this case costs/do), it would be preferable. Would be interesting to see if you have (or anyone else has) come across any official question where this has not been observed to be true.

Also, am curious to know what the source of your original sentence is (elderly citizens..).
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by aditya8062 » Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:47 am
To EducationAisle
EducationAisle:Unfortunately in the answer choices for this sentence, we don't have an option where everything else is the same except the do/cost towards the end
there u go !! the fact that we dont have that option dosent mean that the option without "verb" at the end is wrong .i do agree that at times we need "verbs" at the end but that only when u want to remove the ambiguity
However, it seems to me that if there is an option among the answer choices that does explicitly mention the verb (in this case costs/do), it would be preferable.
well gmat will never test on such close options .the fact that i said we dont need a verb in this particular case does not mean that putting a verb will make the sentence(in this case) wrong .both the sentence will stand right.
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by EducationAisle » Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:56 am
Sure Aditya, but I think you missed my point. What I intended to say was that if there is option(s) provided that do mention a verb, chances are more that such options will be preferred by GMAT (obviously assuming that there is no other grave error in such options).

While you might consider this a moot point, sometimes it does boil down to eliminating answer choices that have a lesser chance of being correct, given GMAT's preference.
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