The newly launched healthcare scheme extends the assurance

I eliminated (A), (B) and (C) because of the use of “what”, deleted (E) for its incorrect parallelism , and thus got (D) as the final answer.

But I cannot articulate why the use of past perfect tense is correct in (D). If I were the writer, I might refer the past simple tense or present perfect tense.

It reminds me of another official question:

“According to some analysts, the gains in the stock market reflect growing confidence that the economy will avoid the recession that many had feared earlier in the year and instead come in for a 'soft landing', followed by a gradual increase in the business activity.”

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Extends the assurance requires 'that' as an explanation is to be followed. Hence a,b,c are eliminated.

Between d & e, d is shorter and crisp. The use of and in both indicates parallel structure which is incorrect in e due to use of the word limiting.

Hence D is the answer

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Hi experts generis avigutman IanStewart

Though I answered this question correctly, I am unsure about this sentence's meaning. Could you help me confirm the meaning when you have time? Thank you so much!

I am unsure particularly about the sentence's phrasing "extends the assurance," because this sentence talks about the insurance business, and both words "extend" and "assurance" have more than one meaning and could refer to insurance-related terms.

Hence, I am not certain whether "extending the assurance" means "making a type of insurance longer" (for example, making the insurance period longer) or "offer a promise."

This sentence, with the correct option (D), reads as:
The newly launched healthcare scheme extends the assurance that the provisions will reduce the risk that many analysts had predicted previously and limit the losses insurers incur from higher than expected medical claims.

I guess that "offering a promise" is a better interpretation because the noun clause "that the provisions (insurance terms) will reduce the risk and limit the loss" can logically follow the noun "assurance/promise." Then, this sentence means that the new healthcare plan offers a promise that the insurance terms can do something good.

On the other hand, if "extending the assurance" means "making a type of insurance longer," the relation between the following noun clause and the first part is not clear. (There is no indicator of relation such as "so...that.")

Could you share some thoughts?
Thank you.

Hi GraceSCKao, I generally find it counterproductive to dive into unofficial GMAT problems, so I'll just address your reference to this official problem above, and quote an excellent explanation by GMATNinja:

I know "assurance" means "insurance" in French, and I think it's used to refer to insurance in UK English, but I've not heard it used as a synonym of 'insurance' in North American English, so here it presumably means something like 'promise'.

The word 'extend' can mean 'offer', but when it does, it has a certain connotation. Used that way, it really means someone is holding something out (you could visualize, either literally or metaphorically, something held in an extended hand) that someone else might accept or not. So you can extend an olive branch, or a helping hand, or an offer, or an invitation. I don't see how you can 'extend an assurance', in this sense, though I'm fairly sure that's what the sentence is trying to say. So the word seems to be misused, to my reading. I don't think the intended meaning is "prolong", because "the provisions" the sentence refers to I'm guessing are meant to be provisions of this new health care scheme, and if the scheme is new, the provisions are new, so they can't be prolonged; they can only be introduced. But the writing isn't clear or precise (I can't even tell if "the provisions" are part of the "scheme", which means the OA isn't conveying its meaning effectively, and that shouldn't be true of the right answer to an SC question), so it's not worth expending much effort trying to decode it.

Thank you IanStewart for your excellent and clear explanations!
I've learned more with your post.

Cambridge Dictionary is the online dictionary I use most of the time. I was surprised when I found in the dictionary that the word "assurance" can mean "insurance," but the dictionary also says that it is mainly for UK use. Meanwhile, I seldom see the word "extend" used to mean "offer," and your explanation is wonderful--now I know how to use the word and how to use the word correctly.

Thank you for your suggestions! I will spend more time on official SC questions.


Thank you avigutman for your suggestions!

This project is interesting to me since test takers can discuss before the correct answer are revealed, and sometimes there are good questions. But I can see that some unofficial questions use the same structures adopted by the official questions. I will spend more time on official SC questions.