Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than non union

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question -

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of the crucial part of this sentence is that the lower-end insurance plans impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients and as a result, doctors spend less time with each patient.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Verb Forms + Tenses

• Information that is permanent in nature is best conveyed through the simple present tense.
• Present participles ("verb+ing" – - "imposing" and "requiring" in this sentence) are used to modify nouns, refer to ongoing events in any time period, and (when preceded by a comma) express cause-effect relationships.
• A list separated by commas represents similar elements; in this case.

A: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "and spend less time with each"; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies that the lower-end insurance plans require doctors to see more patients and, as a separate act, the plans require them to spend less time with each patient; the intended meaning is that the lower-end insurance plans require doctors to see more patients and, as a result, doctors practically spend less time with each patient. Further, Option A incorrectly uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "imposing" and "requiring" to refer to information that is permanent in nature; please remember, information that is permanent in nature is best conveyed through the simple present tense, and present participles ("verb+ing" – - "imposing" and "requiring" in this sentence) are used to modify nouns, refer to ongoing events in any time period, and (when preceded by a comma) express cause-effect relationships.

B: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "and spending less time with each"; the inclusion of "spending" in a list alongside "imposing" and "requiring" illogically implies that lower-end insurance plans impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and spend less time with each patient; the intended meaning is that lower-end insurance plans impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients and as a result, doctors spend less time with each patient; please remember, a list separated by commas represents similar elements; in this case, the three phrases involved have different roles in the correct meaning of the sentence - "imposing" and "requiring" are actions taken by the plans, and "spending" is an action that results from "requiring". Further, Option B incorrectly uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "imposing", "requiring", and "spending" to refer to information that is permanent in nature; please remember, information that is permanent in nature is best conveyed through the simple present tense, and present participles ("verb+ing" – "imposing", "requiring", and "spending" in this sentence) are used to modify nouns, refer to ongoing events in any time period, and (when preceded by a comma) express cause-effect relationships.

C: Trap. This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "and spend less time with each"; the inclusion of "spend" in a list alongside "impose" and "require" illogically implies that lower-end insurance plans impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and spend less time with each patient; the intended meaning is that lower-end insurance plans impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients and as a result, doctors spend less time with each patient; please remember, a list separated by commas represents similar elements; in this case, the three phrases involved have different roles in the correct meaning of the sentence - "impose" and "require" are actions taken by the plans, and "spend" is an action that results from "require".

D: Correct. This answer choice uses the phrase "impose...and require doctors to see more patients, spending less time with each"; the parallelism between "impose" and "require" and the use of the "comma + present participle ("verb+ing" - "spending" in this sentence)" construction correctly conveys the intended meaning - that the lower-end insurance plans impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients and as a result, doctors spend less time with each patient. Further, Option D correctly uses the simple present tense verbs "impose" and "require" to refer to information that is permanent in nature.

E: Trap. This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "requiring doctors to see more patients and spending"; the use of the "comma + present participle ("verb+ing" - "requiring" and "spending" in this sentence) illogically implies that lower-end insurance plans impose stricter limits on medical services and, as a result, the plans require doctors to see more patients, and the plans spend less time with each patient; the intended meaning is that lower-end insurance plans impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients and as a result, doctors spend less time with each patient; please remember, the introduction of present participle ("verb+ing"- “requiring” and "spending" in this case) after comma generally leads to a cause-effect relationship.

Hence, D is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



To understand the concept of "Comma + Present Participles for Cause-Effect Relationships" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~3 minutes):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

The reason "imposing" is wrong is that the following contruction is considered WRONG:

1) preposition + noun + present participle

Eg: James jumped over the cat speeding at 30 km.

In this sentence, is "speeding" modifying "the cat" or "James"?? We have "the cat" right after the preposition "over", and then "the cat" is followed by the present participle "speeding."

In option A, this is what we have:

in lower-end insurance plans imposing

Is "imposing" modifying "lower-end insurance plans" or is it modifying "union members" or "non union members"????
The construction "preposition + noun + present participle" creates this confusion.

One more note: Unlike the past participle, the present participle doesn't have to be placed right next to the noun that it modifies. The present participle can be placed far away from it referent noun, which is why "imposing" here creates an issue because we have 3 different nouns behind it.

I would go with option D

A and B are clearly rejected, we are left with C, D and E.
the second part of the sentence gives 2 the features of the insurance plan:
- Imposing stricter limits on medical services
- require doctors to see more patients.
because seeing more patients in less time indicates spending less time with each, we don't need to separate the two by 'and' because they invariably mean the same.
So, the 2 features are separated by 'and' and the following by a comma.

Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than nonunion members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, spending less time with each.

E is wrong because it reads as if its the stricter limits on medical services that are requiring doctors to see more patients versus D, which is correct, distinguish that its the lower end insurance plans that require doctors to see more patients. I didn't get it at first after carefully reading it I was able to see where the problem lies.

Low-end Insurance plans only impose stricter limits, however it cannot command doctor to see more patients or less. All the above tells the same except for E, which says that due to stricter limits and not due to low end insurance plans, doctors have to see more patients Similarly, it is not Insurance plans that spend less time, but its the doctor who spends less time.

Hence, IMO E.

(A) imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend
(B) imposing stricter limits on medical services , requiring doctors to see more patients, and spending
(C) that impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and spend
(D) that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, spending
(E) that impose stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients and spending


Spending less time with each is a modifying clause that modifies doctors.
If we use and spend/spending above meaning is lost, and the sentence assumes the below form:-
1.Investment plans impose stricter limits on medical services
2.Investment plans require doctors to see more patients
3.Investment plans spend less time with each. completely nonsensical.

hey guys,

nice debate over this stuff.

This is GMATprepr SC and OA is D.

Look at the explanation by Stacey Koprince, Manhattan GMAT instructor, who scored 780.


Among <big group>, <sub-group A> are less likely than <sub-group B> to X.

In the original sentence, X is a very complex clause with two sets of compound modifiers:
to be enrolled in <Y> imposing <modifier1> and requiring<modifier1> [to see <modifier 2> and spend <modifier2>]

The first set of modifiers modifies something before "imposing"; in addition, the "imposing" and "requiring" parts are parallel. The second set modifies something before "to see"; in addition, the "see" and "spend" parts are parallel.

So, let's start with: what are they modifiying? Nouns or clauses? Something, someone, or some clause is "imposing limits" and "requiring doctors" - what is it? It's the "insurance plans." That's a noun, so we want a noun modifier setup. Those -ing words that introduce modifying phrases or clauses indicate adverbial modifiers, not noun modifiers. Eliminate A. Scan the answer. Eliminate B for repeating the error.

You could also have started with the second set: what do they modify? They modify "doctors" and parallelism dictates that we read it as "require doctors to see more" and "<require doctors to> spend less time." The plan actually requires doctors to spend less time with patients? That meaning seems... off. More logically, spending less time would seem to be a consequence of having to see more patients in the first place.

C, D, and E all start with "that." "That" is an indicator of a noun modifier, so that's good. Let's check parallelism next, since we know compound modifiers need to be parallel. This is where it can get a little messy, because we also have "nested" modifiers. So go back and pick apart that meaning:

For simplicity, I'll just type one form of each relevant word. We've got: impose, require, see, spend. Should they all be parallel? Are only some parallel to others? What is each one talking about? Let's see.

The "insurance plans" both impose limits and require doctors, so those two should be parallel. Do the plans see more patients? Nope - the plan requires the doctors to see more patients. Do the plans spend less time with the patients? No - that's also the doctors. Do the plans require doctors to spend less time with patients? I hope not! The "spending less time" thing is a consequence of the previous requirement (having to see more patients).

C says: impose, require, and spend. This says that "insurance plans that impose limits, <insurance plans that> require doctors to see more patients, and <insurance plans that> spend less time with each. That last one has a nonsensical meaning - eliminate.
D says impose and require, spending. This says that "insurance plans that impose limits and <insurance plans that> require doctors to see more patients, spending less time with each." The ", spending" set-up indicates an adverbial modifier. Why are they spending less time with each? Not because they are doctors (noun) or because of the patients (noun), but because the doctors are required to see more patients (clause). Adverbial modifiers modify clauses. So this works.
E says impose, requiring and spending. This says "insurance plans that impose limits, requiring doctors to see more and spending less time with each." The ", requiring... and spending" pieces indicate a compoun adverbial modifier, so the fact that the plans impose limits should result in (a) doctors seeing more patients, and (b) someone (unclear who) spending less time with each. Are the doctors spending less time with the patients? Technically, (a) and (b) should be able to stand completely alone. If I strip out (a), I'm left with "insurance plans that impose stricter limits on medical services, spending less time with each." Who's actually spending less time? I don't know. Meaning is ambiguous - eliminate.
_________________
Stacey Koprince
GMAT Instructor
Director of Online Community
Manhattan GMAT

OA is D.

here's the explanation by ron.
you have to realize which verbs are supposed to be parallel and which aren't. there's no grammatical formula for this; you have to examine the meaning of the sentence to figure it out.
- 'impose' (in whatever form) should be parallel to 'require' (again, in whatever form). these are two different things, both of which are aspects of the plan (= logical parallelism).
- 'spend' should not be parallel to 'see', because it functions as a modifier of 'see' (it's a descriptive adverb modifier, detailing the way in which the doctors see the patients).

If you look at the question quickly, you may notice the parallelism in answer choice C with impose, require, and spend. This is a trap answer.

If you look more closely you will notice that the lower-end insurance plans do impose and require but they do not spend. It's actually the doctors that are spending. So the parallelism is as follows:

...lower-end insurance plans that impose...and require doctors to see more patients, spending less time with each.

I hope that helps!

Here's the soluton:

A quick look at the underlined part will tell you that it should qualify 'lower-end insurance plans' that just precedes the underlined clause. Now, let's take a look at the given options.

Options A and B both begin with 'imposing' suggesting that likelihood of non-union members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans is a continuing/continous action. However, here, the 'likelihood' suggests tha the action is something that is desired i.e. it should be in the future tense. Hence, we can straight away rule out these options as incorrect as they have a tense mismatch.

Options C, D and E all begin with 'that'. Hence we need to check the rest of the clause to determine the correct answer choice. As the clause qualifies 'lower-end insurance plans', the various elements in the underlined clause should be parallel and in sync with this.
Let's look at the three elements in the clause -
- impose stricter limits
- require doctors to see more patients
- spend less time with each other

From these elements, it's clear that the 'lower-end insurance plans' can 'impose stricter limits' and 'require doctors to see more patients'. However 'lower-end insurance plans' cannot 'spend less time with each other'. Clearly, 'spending less time with each other' qualifies the doctor and patients. Using the gerund (ing form) of the verb 'spend' will make this refer to doctor and patients correctly.
Hence option D is the correct option which has the first two parts (impose stricter limits and require doctors to see more patients) parallel and the third part qualifying 'doctors' and 'patients' correctly.

Hope this helps!

Cheers.

how do we make out which is // and which is not

still not clear can you make it a bit clear please????

Hi,

Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than nonunion members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend less time with each.



@mohan514: In order to find out the correct parallel list in the sentence, it is very important to understand the intended logical meaning of the sentence.




The intended logical meaning of the sentence is:
• Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than the nonunion members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans.
• These plans:
o impose stricter limits on medical services, and
o require doctors to see more patients.
• If the doctors are required to see more patients, they will spend less time with each of them.

On this understanding, the two entities that need to be parallel in the sentence are “impose” and “require”.



Error analysis:

1. The sentence here means that the plans: a) impose stricter limits on medical services and b) require doctors: i) to see more patients, and ii) spend less time with each. This is illogical. We need an answer choice that makes “impose” and “require” parallel denoting that these are the two implications of the plans and showing “spend less time” as the outcome of the doctors required to see more patients.

POE:

(A) imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend: Incorrect for reason discussed above.

(B) imposing stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients, and spending: Incorrect. Same error as in A. It’s just that now “spending” is also grammatically parallel to other entities in the list. (This sentence is grammatically sound but changes the intended meaning.)

(C) that impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and spend: Incorrect. Same meaning error as in A. (This sentence is grammatically sound but changes the intended meaning.)

(D) that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, spending: Correct. Verb-ing “spending” after comma modifies the entire preceding clause and hence communicates the intended meaning of the sentence.

(E) that impose stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients and spending: Incorrect. Here the verb-ing modifiers “requiring” and “spending” illogically modifies the preceding clause.




@devinawilliam83: The answer to your first question is "yes".
In this sentence we see the use of multiple modifiers. The first two modifiers are modifying “plans” in the form of “that” clause and the verb-ing modifier “spending” is again modifying one of the modifiers in “that” clause. Since the verb-ing modifiers can either refer to the preceding clause or the preceding noun, depending upon the placement of the comma, there is no other way to write this sentence.
If the sentence did not have the “spending” portion then using two verb-ing modifiers would have been easier. So when the verb-ing modifiers are independent of each other in a parallel list then it is alright to use them one after the other. But in a case like this question, we need to be judicious in the use of modifiers to convey the intended meaning.



1. Understand the logical intended meaning of the sentence.
2. In a parallel list, all the entities must be grammatically as well as logically parallel.
3. Be vary of choices that distort the original meaning of the sentence.
4. When separated with a comma, the verb-ing modifier modifies the preceding clause, when not then it modifies the preceding noun.

The concepts tested in this sentence have been covered in e-gmat concepts:

1. Level 1 - Modifiers - Verb-ing (This concept features in "Level 1 Preview Concepts" that features in free trial concepts. Just register and learn.)
2. Level 1 - Parallelism - Identify & Correct
3. Level 1 - Parallelism - Helpful Tips

Hope this helps.
Shraddha

Hi All,

Among lower- paid workers, union members are less likely than non-union members to be enrolled in lower- end insurance plans imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend less time with each.



Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than non-union members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans. Now these plans do things:
a. they impose stricter limits on medical services, and
b. they require doctors to see more patients.
Now if the doctors are required to see more patients, then they will spend less time with each patient.



Error Analysis:

1. The modifiers “imposing” and “requiring” correctly modify “lower-end insurance plans”, and they are parallel as well. However, “spend less time” fails to show that this action is the effect of doctors seeing more patients per the plans.
2. The only way to show this effect is by turning verb “spend” into verb-ing modifier “spending” to actually show the outcome.
3. This change alone however will not solve the problem because when we have comma + verb-ing modifier, it modifies the preceding clause. With the original sentence structure, the only clause we have is “union members are less likely…”. This is certainly the wrong modification.
4. Hence we need to change verb-ing modifiers “imposing” and “requiring” to “that” clauses so that maintain the parallelism as well as “spending” can correctly modify the “that” clause that talks about the doctors required to see more patients.

POE:

Choice A: imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend: Incorrect for the reasons stated above.

Choice B: imposing stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients, and spending: Incorrect. Turning verb “spend” into verb-ing modifier “spending” now makes it parallel with “imposing” and “requiring”. The sentence now means that the new plans will spend less time with each patient. This is not logical.

Choice C: that impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and spend: Incorrect. This choice repeats the same error by making “impose”, “require”, and “spend” parallel.

Choice D: that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, spending: Correct. The verbs "impose” and “requires” are parallel with the use of “that” clause that correctly shows what the new plans do. Verb-ing modifier “spending” now correctly modifies the preceding action "required to see", correctly showing the effect of the preceding action. The thing to note about the usage of comma + verb-ing modifier is that generally we say that this modifier modifies the preceding clause. But actually this modifier modifies the preceding action. This action may not necessarily be the verb of the preceding clause. It can be an action denoted by the "to verb" phrase. But because generally, a comma _ modifier appears after a clause, we say that it modifies the preceding clause.

In this answer choice, "spending" actually modifies the preceding action "to see" by presenting the result of this action. If doctors are required to see more patients, they will have to spend less time with each to accommodate more patients, Also, "spending" makes sense with the doer of the action denoted by "to see" that is "doctors" as the doctors will spend less time with each patient in order to see more patients.

Choice E: that impose stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients and spending: Incorrect. By making “requiring” and “spending” parallel, the sentence now suggests that these two are the effects of imposing the stricter limits on medical services. This is certainly not the intended meaning of the sentence.



Hi there,
Use of any kind of modifier is completely governed by the context of the sentence. I personally do not like to give out rules but to make it simple for you, I can suggest that use comma + verb-ing modifiers to give additional information or show the results or effects of the preceding clause.

When you need to modify a noun entity, you can either use just the verb-ing modifier or the “that” clause immediately after that noun entity.

When you have a situation like this sentence where we have two modifiers, then use “that” clause to modify the noun entity and use comma + verb-ing modifier to show the effect of the preceding clause.

In this sentence, we could only ascertain where to use which modifier only after we understood the meaning of the sentence. Hence, the key to determine the use of various modifiers is to first understand the logical intended meaning of the sentence and then decide which modifier to use depending upon the roles these modifiers play. So this means that you must have the knowledge of the roles played by various modifiers.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Yeah..actually "imposing" would correctly modify "lower-end insurance plans" in A.

In A, the grammatical parallelism is between "are" and "spend": These are the only two "verbs" in A and since they are connected by "and", the structure of A is:

...union members are ....and spend less time with each.

So, A seems to suggest that union members spend less time with each!!

The intent is obviously that doctors spend less time with each patient.

Among lower- paid workers, union members are less likely than non union members to be enrolled in lower- end insurance plans imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend less time with each.

Prethinking - 'imposing' is a present participle which is acting as a modifier - modifying lower-end insurance plans. So is 'requiring'. Understand that modifiers always provide additional information and removing the same must not affect the meaning of the sentence.

So, the sentence will now look like, union members are less likely than non union members to be enrolled in lower- end insurance plans and spend less time with each.

This doesn't make sense particularly because enrollment in insurance plans has no connection with spending less or more time. So, plans must be followed by a verb and not a modifier (participle) - in which case, the sentence would be, plans impose stricter limits and require doctors to see more patients.

a). imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend
b). imposing stricter limits on medical services , requiring doctors to see more patients, and spending
Going by above explanation, a & b are wrong.

c). that impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and spend
The sentence means that plans impose stricter limits, require doctors to see patients and spend less time with each other.
The first two verbs are fine, but what about the third? How can plans spend less time with each other?
Wrong usage of verb. So, c out.

d). that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, and spending
This option perfectly states the intended meaning.
Plans impose limits and require doctors to see patients, and spending less time with each other.
The word spending is participle modifier (also called verb-ing modifier) and acts as an adjective modifying the preceding clause.
(read about modifiers here)

e). that impose stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients and spending
Though impose acts as a verb, requiring is acting as a verb-ing modifier and modifies the preceding clause. This changes the intended meaning. So, E is wrong.

There is no strict rule that such a modifier always modifies the subject of the previous clause. On GMAT such modifiers mostly modify the subject of the previous clause(or entire clause when expressing result)but that can't be a rule.

The correct usage is as follows:
An end modifier introduced by a present participle and separated by commas mostly modifies
(i) the subject of previous clause
(ii)the whole clause, if it is expressing result
(iii) may refer back to an in between noun in the previous clause. Such a construction is considered correct.

To select the correct antecedent you need to consider the meaning. If you find a logically connected noun referent, that's all correct.

Example: I watched the sun rise over the ridge, blazing over houses, farms, and fields.
Here "blazing over houses, farms, and fields" is not modifying "I" but "Sun" and this is perfectly alright.

Consider the following GMATPrep question on same rule:

United States Senator Daniel Inouye was appointed to several posts within the Democratic Party during his first term, that included assistant majority whip and vice-chair of the Democratic Senatorial Committee.
(A) that included
(B) which includes
(C) including
(D) some of which were
(E) among them being

(C) is the correct answer. "including assistant majority whip and vice-chair of the Democratic Senatorial Committee" is modifying "posts" but not "United States Senator Daniel Inouye"

Hope it's clear now.

>> Pls award KUDOS if it really helped.

Comma + including is one exception. It modifies eligible closest noun; or basically lists elements conveyed by noun in preceding clause.
I like 5 different ice creams flavors, including chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.

Further one should not list all elements but few elements in list following including .
I like 5 different ice creams flavors, including chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, pistachio and butter-scotch. (wrong)

Similarly, there are other exceptions to the use of -ing modifier including is just one of them.