Local reporters investigating the labor dispute reported that only hal

Hi pqhai ,

Thanks for quick reply, but my basic question is : had no / didn't have .

Are we rejecting E only because it is not concise ?

Hi prinkashar

If your question is "which one is correct between "had no" and "didn't have", I would say both are correct.

According to Manhattan GMAT, if you have run out of grammar or meaning issues to apply, and you are down to two choices, then choose the more concise option. Otherwise, do not think about concision.

C & E have no grammar or meaning issues, so C is better (I do not mean E is wrong). However, I think the possibility that this kind of question (just about concision) appears in GMAT is quite rare.

Hope it helps.

It's very clearly C.

eliminate all the answers with "much" in them.

Then, Make the verb tense in the answer parallel to "were covered" which is past tense. "had no" is also past tense, but "did not have" isn't.

C for me.

I eliminated E for an entirely different reason.
If you put E into the sentence, then it becomes:-
more than a hundred others did not have health insurance whatsoever
The presence of "whatsoever" in the above sentence means that we must use either "any" so that the sentence becomes:-

more than a hundred others did not have any health insurance whatsoever
or else use the construct present in (C)

A, B & D can be eliminated because of the use of "much more" which is wrong while referring to countable nouns.

Between C & E the difference is in the use of Simple Past tense "had" in C and Simple Present tense "have" in E.
According to GMAT the Tense used in a sentence must be consistent, unless of course the events take place at different instances.

In the non-underlined portion
Local reporters investigating the labor dispute reported that only half of the workers in the plant were covered by the union health plan; - Simple Past
There is no reason to switch to Simple Present tense in the underlined portion. The half of the workers had no insurance at the same time when the other half were covered. So a simple present is required here.
Hence C is the best option

Local reporters investigating the labor dispute reported that only half of the workers in the plant were covered by the union health plan; more than a hundred others had no health insurance whatsoever.

"had no...whatsoever" will appear in the actual exam?
Pls help, thanks.

The usage is valid. "Whatsoever" here is used as an adverb to mean "at all".... "more than a hundred others had no health insurance whatsoever (= at all)."

KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

There are a few problems in the original sentence. First of all, as much as a hundred is incorrect; the idiom as many as should be used to describe a number of objects (as many as ten speakers but as much as the debt of...). Eliminate (A) and (B). (D) changes the phrasing but is still wrong because much more distorts the meaning of the original sentence. Finally, (C) is better than (E) because had no health insurance whatsoever makes more sense and is more idiomatic than did not have health insurance whatsoever. Notice that both (C) and (E) also simplify the structure of the original at least as much as a hundred and more others by replacing it with more than a hundred others. The change is acceptable because it does not alter the meaning of the original, excessively wordy expression. If there were more than a hundred people, then it's unnecessary to also say that there were at least one hundred people; that's obvious. (C) it is.

An 800 test taker makes sure that the terms describing numbers or quantities are idiomatic.

I found not a single reason to eliminate E

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Hello Adnani,

We hope this finds you well.

To clarify, Option E has no flaw that makes it worthy of elimination; it is just a bit less direct and a bit wordier than C.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team