一、Part Ⅱ Listening Comprehension
1、Question 1 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、Project organizer.
B、Public relations officer.
C、Marketing manager.
D、Market research consultant.
2、Question 2 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、Quantitative advertising research.
B、Questionnaire design.
C、Research methodology.
D、Interviewer training.
3、Question 3 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、They are intensive studies of people’s spending habits.
B、They examine relations between producers and customers.
C、They look for new and effective ways to promote products.
D、They study trends or customer satisfaction over a long period.
4、Question 4 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、The lack of promotion opportunity.
B、Checking charts and tables.
C、Designing questionnaires.
D、The persistent intensity.
5、Question 5 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、His view on Canadian universities.
B、His understanding of higher education.
C、His suggestions for improvements in higher education.
D、His complaint about bureaucracy in American universities.
6、Question 6 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、It is well designed.
B、It is rather inflexible.
C、It varies among universities.
D、It has undergone great changes.
7、Question 7 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、The United States and Canada can learn from each other.
B、Public universities are often superior to private universities.
C、Everyone should be given equal access to higher education.
D、Private schools work more efficiently than public institutions.
8、Question 8 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、University systems vary from country to country.
B、Efficiency is essential to university management.
C、It is hard to say which is better, a public university or a private one.
D、Many private universities in the U.S. are actually large bureaucracies.
9、Question 9 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Government’s role in resolving an economic crisis.
B、The worsening real wage situation around the world.
C、Indications of economic recovery in the United States.
D、The impact of the current economic crisis on people’s life.
10、Question 10 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、They will feel less pressure to raise employees’ wages.
B、They will feel free to choose the most suitable employees.
C、They will feel inclined to expand their business operations.
D、They will feel more confident in competing with their rivals.
11、Question 11 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Employees and companies cooperate to pull through the economic crisis.
B、Government and companies join hands to create jobs for the unemployed.
C、Employees work shorter hours to avoid layoffs.
D、Team work will be encouraged in companies.
12、Question 12 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Whether memory supplements work.
B、Whether herbal medicine works wonders.
C、Whether exercise enhances one’s memory.
D、Whether a magic memory promises success.
13、Question 13 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、They help the elderly more than the young.
B、They are beneficial in one way or another.
C、They generally do not have side effects.
D、They are not based on real science.
14、Question 14 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、They are available at most country fairs.
B、They are taken in relatively high dosage.
C、They are collected or grown by farmers.
D、They are prescribed by trained practitioners.
15、Question 15 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、They have often proved to be as helpful as doing mental exercise.
B、Taking them with other medications might entail unnecessary risks.
C、Their effect lasts only a short time.
D、Many have benefited from them.
16、Question 16 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、How catastrophic natural disasters turn out to be to developing nations.
B、How the World Meteorological Organization studies natural disasters.
C、How powerless humans appear to be in face of natural disasters.
D、How the negative impacts of natural disasters can be reduced.
17、Question 17 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、By training rescue teams for emergencies.
B、By taking steps to prepare people for them.
C、By changing people’s views of nature.
D、By relocating people to safer places.
18、Question 18 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、How preventive action can reduce the loss of life.
B、How courageous Cubans are in face of disasters.
C、How Cubans suffer from tropical storms.
D、How destructive tropical storms can be.
19、Question 19 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、Pay back their loans to the American government.
B、Provide loans to those in severe financial difficulty.
C、Contribute more to the goal of a wider recovery.
D、Speed up their recovery from the housing bubble.
20、Question 20 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、Some banks may have to merge with others.
B、Many smaller regional banks are going to fail.
C、It will be hard for banks to provide more loans.
D、Many banks will have to lay off some employees.
21、Question 21 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、It will work closely with the government.
B、It will endeavor to write off bad loans.
C、It will try to lower the interest rate.
D、It will try to provide more loans.
22、Question 22 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、It won’t help the American economy to rum around.
B、It won’t do any good to the major commercial banks.
C、It will win the approval of the Obama administration.
D、It will be necessary if the economy starts to shrink again.
23、Question 23 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、Being unable to learn new things.
B、Being rather slow to make changes.
C、Losing temper more and more often.
D、Losing the ability to get on with others.
24、Question 24 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、Cognitive stimulation.
B、Community activity.
C、Balanced diet.
D、Fresh air.
25、Question 25 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、Ignoring the signs and symptoms of aging.
B、Adopting an optimistic attitude towards life.
C、Endeavoring to give up unhealthy lifestyles.
D、Seeking advice from doctors from time to time.
二、Part III Reading Comprehension
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
26、(1)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
27、(2)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
28、(3)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
29、(4)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
30、(5)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
31、(6)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
32、(7)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
33、(8)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
34、(9)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally (26)_____: Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers? Users? Software writers? The answer depends on the robot.
Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The (27)_____ of computational power and engineering advances will (28)_____ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, (29)_____ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots,from street cleaning to food preparation.
But there are (30)_____ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will (31)_____ someone’s privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor’s cat. Juries sympathetic to the (32)_____ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing (33)_____ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while (34)_____ space for innovation?
Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, (35)_____ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer’s driving record not the passenger’s.
35、(10)
A、ascends
B、eventually
C、preserving
D、bound
E、proximately
F、interfere
G、definite
H、penalties
I、victims
J、programmed
K、arises
L、combination
M、widespread
N、manifesting
O、invade
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
36、36. With a tax imposed on expensive health insurance plans, most employers will likely transfer money from health expenses into wages.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
37、37. Changes in policy would be approved or rejected as a whole so that lobbyists would find it hard to influence lawmakers.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
38、38. It is not easy to curb the rising medical costs in America.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
39、39. Standardization of forms for automatic processing will save a lot of medical expenses.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
40、40. Republicans and the insurance industry are strongly opposed to the creation of a public insurance plan.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
41、41. Conversion of paper to electronic medical records will help eliminate redundant tests and prevent drug interactions.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
42、42. The high cost of medical services and unnecessary tests and treatments have driven up medical expenses.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
43、43. One main factor that has driven up medical expenses is that doctors are compensated for the amount of care rather than its effect.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
44、44. Contrary to analysts’ doubts, the author believes drug prices may be lowered through negotiation.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Reform and Medical Costs
【A】 Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer is that no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how care is delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful.abnormal system—is likely to be achieved only through trial and error and incremental (渐进的) gains.
【B】 The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise in medical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days is contained in these measures.”
【C】 Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.
【D】 Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to address those problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.
【E】 Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organize work. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. If private plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to let providers shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics say Congress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook (放过). That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong “pay-go” rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.
【F】 The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax (消费税) on health insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. It would most likely cause insurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project that most employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House bill has no similar tax. The final legislation should.
【G】 Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients who have tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought to save money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, its trade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated that step would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock that pledge into law.
【H】 The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medical system to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires open investments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminating redundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.
【I】 Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for the quantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost of care is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient’s needs over a year. No one knows how to make that happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs.are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.
【J】 Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expanded and the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission to monitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare’s Payment policies to urge providers to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as a whole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.
【K】 The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which small businesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a public option. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy to compare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentive to sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strong incentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demanding better deals from providers.
【L】 The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to the fierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save much money. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather than using Medicare rates as many reformers wanted.
【M】 The president’s stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how well various treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺) cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its common competitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.
【N】 Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care. (That would be true only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments proven to be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of these studies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.
【O】 Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to Pay preferentially for treatments proven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. But overall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot of unnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.
【P】 The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretary would get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. It does in other countries.
【Q】 Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpractice awards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is some evidence that doctors engage in “defensive medicine” by performing tests and treatments primarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.
45、45. Fair competition might create a strong incentive for insurers to charge less.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Q、Q
Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage (下水道污水) to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.
While the practice carries serious health risks for many, those dangers are outweighed by the social and economic gains for poor urban farmers and consumers who need affordable food.
“There is a large potential for waste water agriculture to both help and hurt great numbers of urban consumers.” said Liqa Raschid-Sally, who led the study.
The report focused on poor urban areas, where farms in or near cities supply relatively inexpensive food. Most of these operations draw irrigation water from local rivers or lakes. Unlike developed cities, however, these areas lack advanced water-treatment facilities, and rivers effectively become sewers (下水道).
When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related (与腹泻相关的) diseases, according to WHO statistics. More than 80% of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.
“Those dangers can be addressed with farmer and consumer education,” he said. “while the free water and nutrients from human waste can help urban farmers in developing countries to escape poverty.”
Agriculture is a water-intensive business, accounting for nearly 70% of global flesh water consumption.
In poor, dry regions, untreated waste water is the only viable irrigation source to keep farmers in business. In some cases, water is so scarce that farmers break open sewage pipes transporting waste to local rivers.
Irrigation is the primary agricultural use of human waste in the developing world. But frequently untreated human waste harvested from lavatories is delivered to farms and spread as fertilizer.
In most cases, the human waste is used on grain crops, which are eventually cooked, minimizing the risk of transmitting water-borne diseases. With fertilizer prices jumping nearly 50% per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and often necessary, alternative.
In cases where sewage mud is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided. The mud contains the same critical nutrients.
“Overly strict standards often fail,” James Bartram, a WHO water-health expert said. “We need to accept that fact across much of the planet, so waste with little or no treatment will be used in agriculture for good reason.”
46、46. What does the author say about the use of raw sewage for farming?
A、Its risks cannot be overestimated.
B、It should be forbidden altogether.
C、Its benefits outweigh the hazards involved.
D、It is polluting millions of acres of cropland.
Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage (下水道污水) to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.
While the practice carries serious health risks for many, those dangers are outweighed by the social and economic gains for poor urban farmers and consumers who need affordable food.
“There is a large potential for waste water agriculture to both help and hurt great numbers of urban consumers.” said Liqa Raschid-Sally, who led the study.
The report focused on poor urban areas, where farms in or near cities supply relatively inexpensive food. Most of these operations draw irrigation water from local rivers or lakes. Unlike developed cities, however, these areas lack advanced water-treatment facilities, and rivers effectively become sewers (下水道).
When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related (与腹泻相关的) diseases, according to WHO statistics. More than 80% of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.
“Those dangers can be addressed with farmer and consumer education,” he said. “while the free water and nutrients from human waste can help urban farmers in developing countries to escape poverty.”
Agriculture is a water-intensive business, accounting for nearly 70% of global flesh water consumption.
In poor, dry regions, untreated waste water is the only viable irrigation source to keep farmers in business. In some cases, water is so scarce that farmers break open sewage pipes transporting waste to local rivers.
Irrigation is the primary agricultural use of human waste in the developing world. But frequently untreated human waste harvested from lavatories is delivered to farms and spread as fertilizer.
In most cases, the human waste is used on grain crops, which are eventually cooked, minimizing the risk of transmitting water-borne diseases. With fertilizer prices jumping nearly 50% per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and often necessary, alternative.
In cases where sewage mud is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided. The mud contains the same critical nutrients.
“Overly strict standards often fail,” James Bartram, a WHO water-health expert said. “We need to accept that fact across much of the planet, so waste with little or no treatment will be used in agriculture for good reason.”
47、47. What is the main problem caused by the use of waste water for irrigation?
A、Rivers and lakes nearby will gradually become contaminated.
B、It will drive producers of chemical fertilizers out of business.
C、Farmers and consumers may be affected by harmful bacteria.
D、It will make the farm produce less competitive on the market.
Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage (下水道污水) to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.
While the practice carries serious health risks for many, those dangers are outweighed by the social and economic gains for poor urban farmers and consumers who need affordable food.
“There is a large potential for waste water agriculture to both help and hurt great numbers of urban consumers.” said Liqa Raschid-Sally, who led the study.
The report focused on poor urban areas, where farms in or near cities supply relatively inexpensive food. Most of these operations draw irrigation water from local rivers or lakes. Unlike developed cities, however, these areas lack advanced water-treatment facilities, and rivers effectively become sewers (下水道).
When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related (与腹泻相关的) diseases, according to WHO statistics. More than 80% of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.
“Those dangers can be addressed with farmer and consumer education,” he said. “while the free water and nutrients from human waste can help urban farmers in developing countries to escape poverty.”
Agriculture is a water-intensive business, accounting for nearly 70% of global flesh water consumption.
In poor, dry regions, untreated waste water is the only viable irrigation source to keep farmers in business. In some cases, water is so scarce that farmers break open sewage pipes transporting waste to local rivers.
Irrigation is the primary agricultural use of human waste in the developing world. But frequently untreated human waste harvested from lavatories is delivered to farms and spread as fertilizer.
In most cases, the human waste is used on grain crops, which are eventually cooked, minimizing the risk of transmitting water-borne diseases. With fertilizer prices jumping nearly 50% per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and often necessary, alternative.
In cases where sewage mud is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided. The mud contains the same critical nutrients.
“Overly strict standards often fail,” James Bartram, a WHO water-health expert said. “We need to accept that fact across much of the planet, so waste with little or no treatment will be used in agriculture for good reason.”
48、48. What is environmental scientist Pay Drechsel’s attitude towards the use of untreated human waste in agriculture?
A、Favorable.
B、Skeptical.
C、Indifferent.
D、Responsible.
Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage (下水道污水) to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.
While the practice carries serious health risks for many, those dangers are outweighed by the social and economic gains for poor urban farmers and consumers who need affordable food.
“There is a large potential for waste water agriculture to both help and hurt great numbers of urban consumers.” said Liqa Raschid-Sally, who led the study.
The report focused on poor urban areas, where farms in or near cities supply relatively inexpensive food. Most of these operations draw irrigation water from local rivers or lakes. Unlike developed cities, however, these areas lack advanced water-treatment facilities, and rivers effectively become sewers (下水道).
When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related (与腹泻相关的) diseases, according to WHO statistics. More than 80% of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.
“Those dangers can be addressed with farmer and consumer education,” he said. “while the free water and nutrients from human waste can help urban farmers in developing countries to escape poverty.”
Agriculture is a water-intensive business, accounting for nearly 70% of global flesh water consumption.
In poor, dry regions, untreated waste water is the only viable irrigation source to keep farmers in business. In some cases, water is so scarce that farmers break open sewage pipes transporting waste to local rivers.
Irrigation is the primary agricultural use of human waste in the developing world. But frequently untreated human waste harvested from lavatories is delivered to farms and spread as fertilizer.
In most cases, the human waste is used on grain crops, which are eventually cooked, minimizing the risk of transmitting water-borne diseases. With fertilizer prices jumping nearly 50% per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and often necessary, alternative.
In cases where sewage mud is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided. The mud contains the same critical nutrients.
“Overly strict standards often fail,” James Bartram, a WHO water-health expert said. “We need to accept that fact across much of the planet, so waste with little or no treatment will be used in agriculture for good reason.”
49、49. What does Pay Drechsel think of the risks involved in using untreated human waste for farming?
A、They have been somewhat exaggerated.
B、They can be dealt with through education.
C、They will be minimized with new technology.
D、They can be addressed by improved sanitation.
Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage (下水道污水) to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.
While the practice carries serious health risks for many, those dangers are outweighed by the social and economic gains for poor urban farmers and consumers who need affordable food.
“There is a large potential for waste water agriculture to both help and hurt great numbers of urban consumers.” said Liqa Raschid-Sally, who led the study.
The report focused on poor urban areas, where farms in or near cities supply relatively inexpensive food. Most of these operations draw irrigation water from local rivers or lakes. Unlike developed cities, however, these areas lack advanced water-treatment facilities, and rivers effectively become sewers (下水道).
When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related (与腹泻相关的) diseases, according to WHO statistics. More than 80% of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.
“Those dangers can be addressed with farmer and consumer education,” he said. “while the free water and nutrients from human waste can help urban farmers in developing countries to escape poverty.”
Agriculture is a water-intensive business, accounting for nearly 70% of global flesh water consumption.
In poor, dry regions, untreated waste water is the only viable irrigation source to keep farmers in business. In some cases, water is so scarce that farmers break open sewage pipes transporting waste to local rivers.
Irrigation is the primary agricultural use of human waste in the developing world. But frequently untreated human waste harvested from lavatories is delivered to farms and spread as fertilizer.
In most cases, the human waste is used on grain crops, which are eventually cooked, minimizing the risk of transmitting water-borne diseases. With fertilizer prices jumping nearly 50% per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and often necessary, alternative.
In cases where sewage mud is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided. The mud contains the same critical nutrients.
“Overly strict standards often fail,” James Bartram, a WHO water-health expert said. “We need to accept that fact across much of the planet, so waste with little or no treatment will be used in agriculture for good reason.”
50、50.What do we learn about James Bartram’s position on the use of human waste for farming?
A、He echoes Pay Drechsel’s opinion on the issue.
B、He challenges Liqa Raschid-Sally’s conclusion.
C、He thinks it the only way out of the current food crisis.
D、He deems it indispensable for combating global poverty.
These days, nobody needs to cook. Families graze on high-cholesterol take-aways and microwaved ready-meals. Cooking is an occasional hobby and a vehicle for celebrity chefs. Which makes it odd that the kitchen has become the heart of the modern house: what the great hall was to the medieval castle, the kitchen is to the 21st-century home.
The money spent on kitchens has risen with their status. In America the kitchen market is now worth $170 billion, five times the country’s film industry. In the year to August 2007, IKEA, a Swedish furniture chain, sold over one million kitchens worldwide. The average budget for a “major” kitchen over haul in 2006, calculates Remodeling magazine, was a staggering $54,000; even a “minor” improvement cost on average $18,000.
Exclusivity, more familiar in the world of high fashion, has reached the kitchen: Robinson&Cornish, a British manufacturer of custom-made kitchens, offers a Georgian-style one which would cost £145,000-155,000—excluding building, plumbing and electrical work. Its big selling point is that nobody else will have it: “You won’t see this kitchen anywhere else in the world.”
The elevation of the room that once belonged only to the servants to that of design showcase for the modern family tells the story of a century of social change. Right into the early 20th century, kitchens were smoky, noisy places, generally located underground, or to the back of the house, and as far from living space as possible. That was as it should be: kitchens were for servants, and the aspiring middle classes wanted nothing to do with them.
But as the working classes prospered and the servant shortage set in, housekeeping became a matter of interest to the educated classes. One of the pioneers of a radical new way of thinking about the kitchen was Catharine Esther Beecher, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In American Woman’s Home, published in 1869, the Beecher sisters recommended a scientific approach to household management, designed to enhance the efficiency of a woman’s work and promote order.
Many contemporary ideas about kitchen design can be traced back to another American, Christine Frederick, who set about enhancing the efficiency of the housewife. Her l919 work, Household Engineering Scientific Management in the Home, was based on detailed observation of a housewife’s daily routine. She borrowed the principle of efficiency on the factory floor and applied it to domestic tasks on the kitchen floor.
Frederick’s central idea, that “stove, sink and kitchen table must be placed in such a relation that useless steps are avoided entirely”, inspired the first fully fitted kitchen, designed in the 1920s by Margarete Schutter-Lihotsky. It was a modernist triumph, and many elements remain central features of today’s kitchen.
51、51. What does the author say about the kitchen of today?
A、It is where housewives display their cooking skills.
B、It is where the family entertains important guests.
C、It has become something odd in a modern house.
D、It is regarded as the center of a modern home.
These days, nobody needs to cook. Families graze on high-cholesterol take-aways and microwaved ready-meals. Cooking is an occasional hobby and a vehicle for celebrity chefs. Which makes it odd that the kitchen has become the heart of the modern house: what the great hall was to the medieval castle, the kitchen is to the 21st-century home.
The money spent on kitchens has risen with their status. In America the kitchen market is now worth $170 billion, five times the country’s film industry. In the year to August 2007, IKEA, a Swedish furniture chain, sold over one million kitchens worldwide. The average budget for a “major” kitchen over haul in 2006, calculates Remodeling magazine, was a staggering $54,000; even a “minor” improvement cost on average $18,000.
Exclusivity, more familiar in the world of high fashion, has reached the kitchen: Robinson&Cornish, a British manufacturer of custom-made kitchens, offers a Georgian-style one which would cost £145,000-155,000—excluding building, plumbing and electrical work. Its big selling point is that nobody else will have it: “You won’t see this kitchen anywhere else in the world.”
The elevation of the room that once belonged only to the servants to that of design showcase for the modern family tells the story of a century of social change. Right into the early 20th century, kitchens were smoky, noisy places, generally located underground, or to the back of the house, and as far from living space as possible. That was as it should be: kitchens were for servants, and the aspiring middle classes wanted nothing to do with them.
But as the working classes prospered and the servant shortage set in, housekeeping became a matter of interest to the educated classes. One of the pioneers of a radical new way of thinking about the kitchen was Catharine Esther Beecher, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In American Woman’s Home, published in 1869, the Beecher sisters recommended a scientific approach to household management, designed to enhance the efficiency of a woman’s work and promote order.
Many contemporary ideas about kitchen design can be traced back to another American, Christine Frederick, who set about enhancing the efficiency of the housewife. Her l919 work, Household Engineering Scientific Management in the Home, was based on detailed observation of a housewife’s daily routine. She borrowed the principle of efficiency on the factory floor and applied it to domestic tasks on the kitchen floor.
Frederick’s central idea, that “stove, sink and kitchen table must be placed in such a relation that useless steps are avoided entirely”, inspired the first fully fitted kitchen, designed in the 1920s by Margarete Schutter-Lihotsky. It was a modernist triumph, and many elements remain central features of today’s kitchen.
52、52. Why does the Georgian-style kitchen sell at a very high price?
A、It is believed to have tremendous artistic value.
B、No duplicate is to be found in any other place.
C、It is manufactured by a famous British company.
D、No other manufacturer can produce anything like it.
These days, nobody needs to cook. Families graze on high-cholesterol take-aways and microwaved ready-meals. Cooking is an occasional hobby and a vehicle for celebrity chefs. Which makes it odd that the kitchen has become the heart of the modern house: what the great hall was to the medieval castle, the kitchen is to the 21st-century home.
The money spent on kitchens has risen with their status. In America the kitchen market is now worth $170 billion, five times the country’s film industry. In the year to August 2007, IKEA, a Swedish furniture chain, sold over one million kitchens worldwide. The average budget for a “major” kitchen over haul in 2006, calculates Remodeling magazine, was a staggering $54,000; even a “minor” improvement cost on average $18,000.
Exclusivity, more familiar in the world of high fashion, has reached the kitchen: Robinson&Cornish, a British manufacturer of custom-made kitchens, offers a Georgian-style one which would cost £145,000-155,000—excluding building, plumbing and electrical work. Its big selling point is that nobody else will have it: “You won’t see this kitchen anywhere else in the world.”
The elevation of the room that once belonged only to the servants to that of design showcase for the modern family tells the story of a century of social change. Right into the early 20th century, kitchens were smoky, noisy places, generally located underground, or to the back of the house, and as far from living space as possible. That was as it should be: kitchens were for servants, and the aspiring middle classes wanted nothing to do with them.
But as the working classes prospered and the servant shortage set in, housekeeping became a matter of interest to the educated classes. One of the pioneers of a radical new way of thinking about the kitchen was Catharine Esther Beecher, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In American Woman’s Home, published in 1869, the Beecher sisters recommended a scientific approach to household management, designed to enhance the efficiency of a woman’s work and promote order.
Many contemporary ideas about kitchen design can be traced back to another American, Christine Frederick, who set about enhancing the efficiency of the housewife. Her l919 work, Household Engineering Scientific Management in the Home, was based on detailed observation of a housewife’s daily routine. She borrowed the principle of efficiency on the factory floor and applied it to domestic tasks on the kitchen floor.
Frederick’s central idea, that “stove, sink and kitchen table must be placed in such a relation that useless steps are avoided entirely”, inspired the first fully fitted kitchen, designed in the 1920s by Margarete Schutter-Lihotsky. It was a modernist triumph, and many elements remain central features of today’s kitchen.
53、53. What does the change in the status of the kitchen reflect?
A、Improved living conditions.
B、Women’s elevated status.
C、Technological progress.
D、Social change.
These days, nobody needs to cook. Families graze on high-cholesterol take-aways and microwaved ready-meals. Cooking is an occasional hobby and a vehicle for celebrity chefs. Which makes it odd that the kitchen has become the heart of the modern house: what the great hall was to the medieval castle, the kitchen is to the 21st-century home.
The money spent on kitchens has risen with their status. In America the kitchen market is now worth $170 billion, five times the country’s film industry. In the year to August 2007, IKEA, a Swedish furniture chain, sold over one million kitchens worldwide. The average budget for a “major” kitchen over haul in 2006, calculates Remodeling magazine, was a staggering $54,000; even a “minor” improvement cost on average $18,000.
Exclusivity, more familiar in the world of high fashion, has reached the kitchen: Robinson&Cornish, a British manufacturer of custom-made kitchens, offers a Georgian-style one which would cost £145,000-155,000—excluding building, plumbing and electrical work. Its big selling point is that nobody else will have it: “You won’t see this kitchen anywhere else in the world.”
The elevation of the room that once belonged only to the servants to that of design showcase for the modern family tells the story of a century of social change. Right into the early 20th century, kitchens were smoky, noisy places, generally located underground, or to the back of the house, and as far from living space as possible. That was as it should be: kitchens were for servants, and the aspiring middle classes wanted nothing to do with them.
But as the working classes prospered and the servant shortage set in, housekeeping became a matter of interest to the educated classes. One of the pioneers of a radical new way of thinking about the kitchen was Catharine Esther Beecher, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In American Woman’s Home, published in 1869, the Beecher sisters recommended a scientific approach to household management, designed to enhance the efficiency of a woman’s work and promote order.
Many contemporary ideas about kitchen design can be traced back to another American, Christine Frederick, who set about enhancing the efficiency of the housewife. Her l919 work, Household Engineering Scientific Management in the Home, was based on detailed observation of a housewife’s daily routine. She borrowed the principle of efficiency on the factory floor and applied it to domestic tasks on the kitchen floor.
Frederick’s central idea, that “stove, sink and kitchen table must be placed in such a relation that useless steps are avoided entirely”, inspired the first fully fitted kitchen, designed in the 1920s by Margarete Schutter-Lihotsky. It was a modernist triumph, and many elements remain central features of today’s kitchen.
54、54. What was the Beecher sisters’ idea of a kitchen?
A、A place where women could work more efficiently.
B、A place where high technology could be applied.
C、A place of interest to the educated people.
D、A place to experiment with new ideas.
These days, nobody needs to cook. Families graze on high-cholesterol take-aways and microwaved ready-meals. Cooking is an occasional hobby and a vehicle for celebrity chefs. Which makes it odd that the kitchen has become the heart of the modern house: what the great hall was to the medieval castle, the kitchen is to the 21st-century home.
The money spent on kitchens has risen with their status. In America the kitchen market is now worth $170 billion, five times the country’s film industry. In the year to August 2007, IKEA, a Swedish furniture chain, sold over one million kitchens worldwide. The average budget for a “major” kitchen over haul in 2006, calculates Remodeling magazine, was a staggering $54,000; even a “minor” improvement cost on average $18,000.
Exclusivity, more familiar in the world of high fashion, has reached the kitchen: Robinson&Cornish, a British manufacturer of custom-made kitchens, offers a Georgian-style one which would cost £145,000-155,000—excluding building, plumbing and electrical work. Its big selling point is that nobody else will have it: “You won’t see this kitchen anywhere else in the world.”
The elevation of the room that once belonged only to the servants to that of design showcase for the modern family tells the story of a century of social change. Right into the early 20th century, kitchens were smoky, noisy places, generally located underground, or to the back of the house, and as far from living space as possible. That was as it should be: kitchens were for servants, and the aspiring middle classes wanted nothing to do with them.
But as the working classes prospered and the servant shortage set in, housekeeping became a matter of interest to the educated classes. One of the pioneers of a radical new way of thinking about the kitchen was Catharine Esther Beecher, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In American Woman’s Home, published in 1869, the Beecher sisters recommended a scientific approach to household management, designed to enhance the efficiency of a woman’s work and promote order.
Many contemporary ideas about kitchen design can be traced back to another American, Christine Frederick, who set about enhancing the efficiency of the housewife. Her l919 work, Household Engineering Scientific Management in the Home, was based on detailed observation of a housewife’s daily routine. She borrowed the principle of efficiency on the factory floor and applied it to domestic tasks on the kitchen floor.
Frederick’s central idea, that “stove, sink and kitchen table must be placed in such a relation that useless steps are avoided entirely”, inspired the first fully fitted kitchen, designed in the 1920s by Margarete Schutter-Lihotsky. It was a modernist triumph, and many elements remain central features of today’s kitchen.
55、55. What do we learn about today’s kitchen?
A、It represents the rapid technological advance in people’s daily life.
B、Many of its central features are no different from those of the 1920s.
C、It has been transformed beyond recognition.
D、Many of its functions have changed greatly.
三、Part IV Translation
56、旗袍(qipao)是一种雅致的中国服饰，源于中国的满族(Manchu Nationality)。在清代，旗袍是王室女性穿着的宽松长袍。上世纪20年代，受西方服饰影响，旗袍发生了一些变化。袖口(cuffs)变窄，袍身变短。这些变化使女性美得以充分展现。
如今，旗袍经常出现在世界级的时装秀上。中国女性出席重要社交聚会时，旗袍往往是她们的首选。很多中国新娘也会选择旗袍作为结婚礼服。一些有影响的人士甚至建议将旗袍作为中国女性的民族服饰。
参考答案：
Qipao is an elegant Chinese costume which originates from Manchu Nationality. In the Qing Dynasty, qipao was loose gown dressed by females of the royal family. In the 1920s, influenced by western dress, it underwent some changes. The cuffs became narrower while the length was shortened. The beauty of female gets full display through such changes.
Nowadays, qipao appears in world-class fashion shows frequently and becomes the first choice for Chinese women to attend important social gatherings. Many Chinese brides choose it as their wedding dresses. Some influential figures even suggest making it as the national costume of Chinese women.
四、Part I Writing
57、Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on living in the virtual world. Try to imagine what will happen when people spend more and more time in the virtual world instead of interacting in the real world. You are required to write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.
参考答案：
It is well acknowledged that the virtual world has exerted great influence on the way people live. However, with an increasing number of people indulging in the virtual world, some people are worried our real life will be ruined in the coming future.
On the one hand, with social networking sites becoming pervasive, real-life communication is largely reduced. As a result, inter-personal relationship becomes worse and worse. Moreover, people fail to present a real self in virtual world because they tend to create an image that others expect them to be. On the other hand, technologies are so advanced that people no longer have to handle complex working stuff all by themselves, because computer programs will deal with it. Thus they do not interact with others any more.
All in all, we spend too much time on and become too dependent on virtual world. Immediate measures should be taken at the moment: we must dedicate more effort to real-life communication and control our time spent on virtual world.
译文：
必须承认虚拟世界对人们的生活方式产生了巨大影响。然而，越来越多的人沉迷虚拟世界使得一些人担心我们的现实生活会在不远的将来被摧毁。
一方面，社交网络变得盛行，现实生活中交流大幅减少。结果，人际关系变得越来越糟糕。此外，人们在虚拟世界呈现的并不是真正的自己，因为他们虚构了别人期望的形象。另一方面，技术如此先进以至于人们不再需要处理复杂的工作内容，因为计算机程序可以处理。因此他们也无需与别人互动。
总之，我们在虚拟世界花费了太多时间，太过于依赖虚拟世界。必须马上采取措施：应该在现实交流上多努力并控制在虚拟世界上花费的时间。
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