argument203-[Spring小组]第10次作业

yshxaUID: 2303585

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: 470          TIME: 0:30:00          DATE: 2008-1-29

  In this argument the author claims that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals. To support his view, the author lists several data and differences between two hospitals--a small nonprofit hospital in Saluda and a large for-profit hospital in Megaville. However, the author neglects several faults that might undermine this argument.
  First of all, the author assumes that the average length of patient's stay is a standard to evaluate a hospital. However, there are no sufficient evidences to substantiate his assumption. Perhaps the hospital in Saluda is a specific hospital while the Megaville hospital a all-around one. Or perhaps people who live in Saluda are healthier than those who live in Megaville. Therefore we cannot just rely on the mere fact that the patient's stay in Saluda hospital is shorter to support the author's claim.
  In the second place, the author claims that the cure rate among patents in the Saluda hospital is about twice that of the Megaville hospital. But unfortunately, this evidence provided by the author cannot sufficiently validate his assumption, either. As we know that the cure rate is not only related to the medical level of a hospital, but also to the number of its patients. It is entirely possible that there are only 100 patients in Saluda hospital and 90 of them are cured per day, while more than 800 of 1000 patients in Megaville hospital are cured. Moreover, as mentioned above, the speciality of the two hospitals might be different, so that the cure rates of them are also not comparable.
  In the third place, based on the fact that the Saluda hospital has more employees per patient than the hospital in Megaville, the author infers that the local hospital is better. However, the author ignores the possibility that there might be only quite a few patients in the local hospital while there are many more in Megaville. Thus, the average of employees per patient in the local hospital will become more, even if the total of employees are much less than that of Megaville hospital.
  In addition, even if there are fewer complaints about service at the Saluda hospital, we cannot conclude that the local hospital’s service is better. The patients in Saluda hospital might be more tolerant so that they may not complain to the hospital publicly.
  In sum, the author’s recommendation that the treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals is not well supported. To strengthen this argument the author must provide more evidence to illustrate the treatment in Saluda hospital is really better than that of Megaville hospital. We also need more information about the number, character of patients in the two places before we make the final decision.