ARGUMENT203=August Rush=小组第7次作业 尾羽

尾羽UID: 2482591

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: 484          TIME: 00:38:55（上帝啊！！！我终于写进3开头的分钟数了！！！）          DATE: 2009-8-13 22:40:23

Basing on the data of the comparison between the two hospital with distinctively feature, and supposing that the situation of the small, nonprofit hospital in Saluda is much better than of the large, for-profit hospital of Megaville, the author accordingly concludes that treatment in all smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than treatment in total larger, for-profit hospitals. It seems to be a rational deduction, while a close examination would reveal how groundless it is.

A threshold assumption upon which this argument relies on that the average length of a patient's stay at the hospital of Saluda is much shorter than at the hospital in Megaville. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that it is necessarily the case and it is entirely possible that the illness the patients got is more serious who seek the medicine in large hospital and who visit the doctor in small one. The common sense informs us that more serious illness, generally, has spend the doctor to treat much more time. Similarly, the cure rate could also be determined by the specific circumstance of the patients' disease. Thus, to improve efficiency, the author must present more information about study like something mentioned above, otherwise suspicions to the study would be brought out.

What further weakens the conclusion in this argument is the fact that there is more employees per patient in the Saluda hospital than the hospital in Megaville. Employees in Saluda may be sluggish with talking or sleeping during the work while the employees of the hospital in Megaville is much more busy for taking care of the patients just because of less coagents. No evidence is presented to indicate that the employees would offer better service in hospital of Saluda than of Megavillie- some weak and ambiguous information is merely thrown into the argument.

Moreover, even assuming that the data would indicate that hospital in Saluda is more outstanding in many aspects than hospital in Megaville, the author still cannot substantiate the assumption to be warranted that all small, nonprofit hospital is much better than larger, for-profits ones. An appropriate example is not very far to seek. It is entirely possible that the outstanding performance of the hospital of Saluda could not as a role to representative the whole small nonprofit hospital, some are also expensive and have quality as bad as the Megaville hospital has. By the contrast, other large hospital could be also economical and of good quality. Under any scenario, adopting the author's proposal might not be persuasive.

As it stands, the conclusion of this argument is not well reasoned. To make it more logically acceptable, the author would have demonstrate detailed investigations with solid fact that what the real standard is for determining whether a hospital is economical and of good quality, and more appropriate deduction that whether the single two hospital could be representative of the two kinds of hospitals' circumstances.