argue 203

lisa_116UID: 2817118

By making a comparison of the small, nonprofit hospital in the town of Saluda with shorter average residence time of patients, higher cure rate among patients, more employees per patient has, and fewer complaints with the large, for-profit one which is in the nearby city of Megaville, the argument concludes that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than that in larger, for-profit hospitals. However, this argument seems logical at fist glance but actually not well-reasoned.

Fist of all, the speaker fails to consider the patients’ condition in these two hospitals. As we can see from the argument, the small hospital is in a town and nonprofit while the large one is a for-profit hospital in the city and therefore, the Megaville hospital is likely to possess a higher level of faculty and medical facilities than the Saluda hospital. Thus, it is reasonable to deduce that people who suffer from heavy healthy problems such as cancers would rather go to the Megaville hospital for cure despite of the high hospitalization costs. To the contrary, the ones that just get indisposition like slight colds would choose the Saluda hospital since it is free. However, it is often the case that it needs more time and has lower cure rate to deal with serious disease than to treat slight illnesses. Therefore it does make sense that Megaville has a longer average stay and a lower cure rate regardless of its better treatment quality.

In addition, there may be more patients in the Megaville hospital which leads to that patients in the Saluda hospital has more employees than the ones in the Megaville hospital. The environment in Megaville hospital might be better than that of the Saluda hospital since it is a large hospital in the city, which can appeal to patients who care more about the surroundings than medical costs. Additionally, patients who suffer from serious disease would possibly go to the larger Megaville hospital for a better medical security. All of the above reasons may lead to a larger number of patients in the Megaville hospital, thus fewer employees per patient has.

Moreover, the reason for fewer complaints in the Saluda hospital might be that people require for-profit hospitals to a higher standard than nonprofit hospitals. Many people may believe that a for-profit hospital should provide a better service than the nonprofit hospital, therefore, patients would complaint once they are not gratified with the thinking of “I have paid the money thus I deserve a high quality service”. Oppositely, they might just put up with it when in nonprofit hospitals.




Overall, the reasoning behind declaring that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals seems insufficient. Thus, before any conclusions are made about the treatment quality in these two kinds of hospitals, more investigation should be done in order to determine the real reasons for these phenomena mentioned in the argument from the respects of patients’ condition, preference and so on.