ARGUMENT203 [Victors小组]第十次作业 by jennetrj

jennetrjUID: 2275453

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: 498          TIME: 00:30:00        

In this argument, the author concludes that treatment in small non-profit hospitals is better and more economic than that in large for-profit hospitals. To justify this conclusion, the author compares the average patients' stay, cure rate between Saluda hospital, the one belongs to the earlier catalogue, and nearby large for-profit hospital, Megaville. Moreover, the author claims that few complaints about Saluda's service were reported. However, close scrutiny reveals several flaws in it.

To begin with, the author unfairly assumes that patients' treatment fees in Saluda hospital is less than that of Megaville. The only evidence provided in the passage is that average length of stay in Saluda was one third of that in Megaville. Apparently, the total expenditure not only relates to patients' length of stay in the hospital, but also to the kind of treatment and other fees. It is totally possible that basic daily cost, like fees for nursing, in Saluda was five times as much as that in Megaville, so that total hospitalization fee is much more. Even if these two hospital charge patients with the same basic rate, there's also the possibility that patients stay at Saluda hospital suffer from more severe diseases which lead to more expenses on medication. Either scenario, if true, would serve to undermine author's assumption that treatment in Saluda is less expensive.

Furthermore, the author hastily makes the assumption that Saluda provided better service since few complaints reported. However, this is not the case. Perhaps quite a few patients did have some comments about the service, while there were no specific accesses available for them to claim about that. Or maybe patients hesitated to complain about the service there, because of the fear that the condition would get worse while staying at the hospital. Without eliminating or even considering such possibilities, the author could not convince me to accept his/her conclusion that service in Saluda is better.

Even granted that Saluda hospital provided better service and charged less for the treatment of same disease with similar severity, no warrant could be made that other small non-profit hospitals are the same. Maybe Saluda is the only hospital in this category that could provide sufficient medical services in the region. Or perhaps government budget cover the need of Saluda hospital, while other small non-profit hospitals are always under the financial problems which impair the medical services there. Until the author complete the analysis, the conclusion that all small non-profit hospitals are better than big for-profit ones could not be taken seriously.

In sum, the argument is groundless as it stands. To consolidate it, the author should provide more evidences to show the comparability of those two hospitals. In addition, the author should ensure us that patients are more satisfied with Saluda's service--maybe by polls among patients treated in Saluda. To better assess the argument, we need to know whether Saluda and Megaville could be the typical of their kinds so as to reach the conclusion that the author has made.