argument203望高人指导

huhu19881222UID: 2766473

TOPIC: ARGUMENT203 - The following appeared in a newspaper feature story.

"At the small, nonprofit hospital in the town of Saluda, the average length of a patient's stay is two days; at the large, for-profit hospital in the nearby city of Megaville, the average patient stay is six days. Also, the cure rate among patients in the Saluda hospital is about twice that of the Megaville hospital. The Saluda hospital has more employees per patient than the hospital in Megaville, and there are few complaints about service at the local hospital. Such data indicate that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals."
WORDS: 487
TIME: 01:08:24
DATE: 2010-2-26 10:10:47
提纲
1 偷换概念 治疗时间短不意味着医院效率高
2 偷换概念 治愈率高不能说明医院质量好
3 错误类比 由这两个医院不能类比到两类医院
In the argument, the author makes the conclusion that smaller, nonprofit hospitals provide more efficiency and better quality than larger, for-profit ones. To substantiate the conclusion, the author cites several comparisons between a small, nonprofit hospital in Saluda(S) and a large, for-profit hospital in Megaville (M): the treatment time of the hospital in S is shorter, the cure rate among patients and employees per patient is higher in the hospital of S, and larger, for-profit hospital in M receives more complaints about service than the nonprofit one.
Close scrutiny of the supporting evidence, however, reveals that it lends little credible support to the author's claim.

The threshold problem with the argument is that staying a shorter time in hospital dose not equate with a higher efficiency. It is entirely possible that the smaller hospital does not have the capacity to cure the patients and have to send them home or other better hospital. Or perhaps the condition of patients in the smaller hospital of S is slight while the condition is severe in M. Since the author fails to account for such possible explanations, I remain unconvinced based on the evidence that the smaller, non-profit hospital has a higher efficiency.

Secondly, a higher cure rate and more employees per patient prove nothing about a better quality. It is equally possible that patients in S suffer from curable disease while the patients in M do not. Without ruling out such case, the author cannot expect me to accept the conclusion. Moreover, more employees per patient are weak evidence about the conclusion that it has a higher quality. Common sense tells us that an economical and high quality hospital will make most use of its employees, and the condition in S may result from low efficiency.

Finally, even if the hospital in S has a higher quality, the mere facts about the comparisons of the two hospitals are still not enough for the arguer to draw the conclusion that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals. Unless the editor sampled the two hospitals randomly across the whole spectrum, the conclusion is not reliable to gauge all the nonprofit hospitals and for-profit ones. For example, the two hospitals mentioned in the argument are not typical enough and therefore cannot reflect the average level of the two kinds of hospitals. Without considering such possibility, the author cannot justifiably popularize the conclusion of the two to all the hospitals.

In sum, the author fails to substantiate his claim that smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than larger, for-profit hospitals. To better bolster it, the author must provide more information about the disease the patients suffer. Additionally, we need more details about the relationship between more employees per patients and a high efficiency. Therefore, if the argument had included the given factors discussed above, it would have been more thorough.