dentobizz wrote:
A major health insurance company in Lagolia pays for special procedures prescribed by physicians only if the procedure is first approved as “medically necessary” by a company-appointed review panel. The rule is intended to save the company the money it might otherwise spend on medically unnecessary procedures. The company has recently announced that in order to reduce its costs, it will abandon this rule.
Which of the following, if true, provides the strongest justification for the company’s decision?
(A) Patients often register dissatisfaction with physicians who prescribe nothing for their ailments.
(B) Physicians often prescribe special procedures that are helpful but not altogether necessary for the health of the patient.
(C) The review process is expensive and practically always results in approval of the prescribed procedure.
(D) The company’s review process does not interfere with the prerogative of physicians, in cases where more than one effective procedure is available, to select the one they personally prefer.
(E) The number of members of the company-appointed review panel who review a given procedure depends on the cost of the procedure.
Dear
dentobizz,
I'm happy to help with this.
Once you learn to see through trap-answers typical of the GMAT CR, the task becomes much easier. We are given some big hints in the passage --- the rule was "
intended to save the company the money" and, later, the company got rid of the rule "
to reduce its costs." This means we are looking for what about the review process was costing money, such that eliminating it would save money? That's the crucial issue. This question contains all kinds of other juicy reasons we might have a negative opinion about the rule (overall patient well-being, doctor autonomy, etc.), but all of those will be strictly irrelevant to the economic decision mentioned here.
(A) Patients often register dissatisfaction with physicians who prescribe nothing for their ailments.A humanitarian concern, but irrelevant to the economic argument ---- doesn't save the company money.
(B) Physicians often prescribe special procedures that are helpful but not altogether necessary for the health of the patient.A humanitarian concern, but irrelevant to the economic argument ---- doesn't save the company money, because those procedures already wouldn't make it past the review board.
(C) The review process is expensive and practically always results in approval of the prescribed procedure.Ah!! The review process itself costs money, apparently more money than it saves. This is very promising.
(D) The company’s review process does not interfere with the prerogative of physicians, in cases where more than one effective procedure is available, to select the one they personally prefer.A professional concern of doctors, but irrelevant to the economic argument ---- doesn't save the company money.
(E) The number of members of the company-appointed review panel who review a given procedure depends on the cost of the procedureDoes changing the number of people on the review panel change the company's cost of running the review panel?? Maybe, maybe not. (It wouldn't if all the members were volunteers, or paid by the government, or something of that nature.) This
could be a strengthener, but we don't know for sure.
(C) is the only clear choice for a strengthener, so it is the only possible choice for the OA.
Here's a blog on GMAT CR strategy:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/save-time- ... questions/Does all this make sense?
Mike
_________________
Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test PrepEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)