Personnel officer: The exorbitant cost of our health-insurance benefit

Question

Personnel officer: The exorbitant cost of our health-insurance benefits reflects the high dollar amount of medical expenses incurred by our employees. Employees who are out of shape, as a group, have higher doctor bills and longer hospital stays than do their colleagues who are fit. Therefore, since we must reduce our health-insurance costs, we should offer a rigorous fitness program of jogging and weight lifting to all employees, and require employees who are out of shape to participate.

Which of the following, if true, provides the most support for the personnel officer's proposal?

(A) The medical expenses incurred by fit people who participate in a program of jogging and weight lifting are less than those incurred by fit people who do not participate in such a program.

(B) More otherwise fit people are injured by participating in rigorous jogging and weight-lifting programs than are injured by participating in moderate jogging and weight-lifting programs.

(C) The likelihood of incurring medical expenses is slightly greater for people who participate in fitness programs offered by their employers than it is for people who participate in programs offered commercially.

(D) Moderate fitness programs increase the average person's fitness to the same extent that rigorous fitness programs do.

(E) More health problems and injuries are the result of mandatory participation in a fitness program than are the result of voluntary participation.

Show Spoiler

Astonished: A previous version of this question (find the assumption) tells that the correct answer should be different. I always thought that assumption/weaken/strengh followed a similar reasoning/approach. Check this out:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/personnel-off ... 53913.html

Paris75 · Answer

I think your question is wrong. It makes no sense. Please refer here: personnel-officer-the-exorbitant-cost-of-our-37634.html?fl=similar This is the right question with right answer choices;

nechets · Answer

Hi Paris, there is no right or wrong question. GMATPrep has two versions for the same steem - one asks to strengh and the other asks to find the assumption. My concern was that I always faced find the assumption questions with the same approach as in weaken or strength questions - as per CR Powerscore Bible. But this does not seem to always be the case. Something test takers should be aware, as well.

Paris75

I think your question is wrong. It makes no sense.

Please refer here: personnel-officer-the-exorbitant-cost-of-our-37634.html?fl=similar

This is the right question with right answer choices;

sayan640 · Answer

The conclusion is :- "since we must reduce our health-insurance costs, we should offer a rigorous fitness program of jogging and weight lifting to all employees, and require employees who are out of shape to participate."

Option A says " The medical expenses incurred by fit people who participate in a program of jogging and weight lifting are less than those incurred by fit people who do not participate in such a program."
Since the medical expenses for fit people who take part in a program of jogging and weight lifting are less than those who do not take part in such programs , and we must reduce the medical expenses and health insurance costs , we should offer a rigorous fitness program to all employees.
Option A is a strengthener and is the answer.

Please give me KUDO s if you liked my answer.

ramlala · Answer

The motive of Personnel officer is to reduce the medical expenses. If he propose the fitness program, it means additional expeses to company. But if these additional expenses can help to reduce earlier medical expenses more, than it is benefitial to company and serve the purpose of Personnel officer.

A perfectly conveys the above reasoning.

IanStewart · Answer

I just happened upon this question today. The answer here must be A, and I'm not sure how this question came to be tagged "debatable OA". There are other answer choices that they could have included that would support the proposal more than A does, but A clearly does support it. Suppose instead we learned that fit people see an increase in medical expenses when they participate in a fitness program, perhaps because they suffer injuries. We then couldn't be sure what effect this proposal will have -- if, say, 95% of the employees are fit, and most of them voluntarily join the program, the company's medical bills could go up and not down, just because the fit employees start to get hurt doing all the extra weight lifting. Answer A rules out that possibility.

All four of the other answer choices actively weaken the proposal that the company "should" offer the program as it is described, rather than do something else (answers B through E suggest, respectively, that a moderate program would be better, that a program offered by a commercial provider would be better, that a rigorous program is unnecessary, and that a fully voluntary program would be better). So the OA here is not "debatable" (as will be true of essentially every official question).

VerbalBot · Answer

Automated notice from GMAT Club VerbalBot: 

A member just gave Kudos to this thread, showing it’s still useful. I’ve bumped it to the top so more people can benefit. Feel free to add your own questions or solutions.

 This post was generated automatically.

Personnel officer: The exorbitant cost of our health-insurance benefit

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

Personnel officer: The exorbitant cost of our health-insurance benefit

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards