Argu203 [Shining Sep 作文组] 8.23

Ajax555UID: 2241288

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: 502          TIME: 0:55:43          DATE: 2006-8-23

In this argument, the arguer asserts that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals. The arguer gives an example of comparing two different hospitals at two places to prove his argument. It seems to support the argument strongly, however, with an exact examination, all these reasons are untenable.

First of all, the arguer cites that 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. This statistics is just about the day of staying, but not the day of curing. It can not prove treatment in a small, nonprofit hospital is a better choice. Perhaps the nonprofit hospital in Saluda is too small to keep all patients to stay in the hospital all the time. The nurses have to ask some light patients to recover and rest at home.

Second, the samples of cure rate of two hospitals are doubtful. It is unreasonable to calculate cure rate of different disease together, because the difficulties of curing different diseases are not the same. For example, in any hospital the cure rate of cold is much higher than that of cancer. If few patients go to the hospital in Saluda for cancer treatment, and many patients want to cure their cancer in the large hospital as the one in Megaville, the cure rate of the Megaville hospital is certainly lower than that of the Saluda hospital.

Furthermore, the amount of employees per patient can not demonstrate the quality of treatment. Although the Saluda hospital has more employees per patient than the Megaville hospital, the arguer do not indicate what these employees' jobs and how about their healing abilities. Three nurses are also three employees, but they are not equal with one experienced doctor. And what is more, the patient's amount is another possible reason to cause this situation. Maybe the patients in Saluda hospital are much less than those in Megaville hospital.

Finally, the complaints of patients can not judge the quality of a hospital. The fact that few patient complained about the Saluda hospital may be caused by other reasons, but not quality. The Saluda hosptial and the Megaville hospital are two different hospitals. One is nonprofit, and the other is for-profit. Because of this, the standards of measuring two hospitals are different in patients' opinions. To cure in the Megallive hospital would cost more money, so patients want to get treatment as better as possible, then there are more complaints than the Saluda hospital.

To sum up, the conclusion lacks of credibility because the evidence cited in the analysis does not lend strong support to what the arguer maintains. To strengthen the argument, the arguer would have to give detail statistics of two hospitals. To better evaluate the argument, we would need a survey of patients' attitude on these two kinds of hospitals.