Argument203 等待拍砖！！

caesar210UID: 2596626

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: 444          TIME: 00:49:22          DATE: 2009-3-8 10:42:58


After comparing the studies of two hospitals, the author argues that smaller, nonprofit hospitals are more economial for their shorter average length of patients' stay and of better quality for higher cure rate, more employees per patient and few complaints about service. In my observation, the analysis made by the author is flawed in three aspects.
To begin with, the fact provided by the argument saying that the small, nonprofit hospital in the town of Saluda has the less average lenth of patients' stay than the large, for-profit hospital in the nearby city of Megeville is not persuative enough to convince us, for the reason that less time staying does not mean being more economical for people. Without more information precisely showing the cost of the hospital staying, it is reasonable to imagine that the money spent in the small hospital per day is much more than that in the large hospital, so that the total expense of the two days in the small hospital is still more than that in the other. In this case, obviously, it is incredible to conclude that the smaller, nonprofit hospitals are more economical.
Secondly, the conclusion by the author that, the rate in the Saluda hospital which is twice that of the Megeville hospital indicates that the former has a better quality, in my observation, is suffering a lack of evidence proving that the higher cure rate is only due to the quality of treatment. It is possible that the small hospital in Saluda is seldom receiving patients with serious illness for that all the people badly illed would rather to go to that larger hospitals to receive treatments, so that most of the patients in the Saluda hospital are not with big trouble and recovers quickly and easily. With possibilities like this, the auther's conclusion is not believable and more informations are needed.
Furthermore, the Saluda hospital's more employees per patient and few complaints about service, in the author's view, leads to better quality of treatment. Nevertheless, other possibilities against this point still exist. One could suppose that it is the fewer people go to the Saluda hospital, other than large sum of employees and better quality of treatment which leads to the fact mentioned in the argument. Without detailed information showing exact numbers and the condition of treatment of the two hospitals, it is too hasty for the author to make conclusion like this.
To sum up, the author seems to make careless conclusion only seeing the skin-deep facts showing by the studies of the two hospitals. More accurate analysis is to be made only if the author provides more detailed information about this topic.