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  3. The ranks of the over 65s grew by 1.4m over the past decade. But old age will not be kind to all of them. One in three will deve

The ranks of the over 65s grew by 1.4m over the past decade. But old age will not be kind to all of them. One in three will deve

admin2015-07-13  15
问题     The ranks of the over 65s grew by 1.4m over the past decade. But old age will not be kind to all of them. One in three will develop dementia(痴呆), around one in six will end up in a nursing or care home and nearly half will need some forms of care. Few will have laid plans to pay for it.
    Knowing the dilemma of elderly voters, the government is moving to change that. Next year it will put & 72,000 on the sum that a person will have to pay towards care, and will raise the means-testing threshold(阀值)from ￡ 23,250 to ￡ 118,000.
    The government had hoped that this reform would not just relieve elderly nerves but also stimulate an insurance market for end-of-life care. Unfortunately, that is not happening.
    Many people continue to assume, wrongly, that the NHS will pay, says Yvonne Braun from the Association of British Insurers. And most are overly optimistic about their health in old age, underestimating(低估)the risks and costs they will suffer. Joan Costa-Font, from the London School of Economics, adds that the idea of care insurance seems to conflict with social values. A kind of familial moral hazard kicks in, as people fear their children will no longer look after them if they are insured.
    Care costs are so hard to predict that insurers tend to protect themselves with big insurance expenses, making insurance difficult to afford. The government’s new policy, which was supposed to sort this out, comes with alarming warnings. It does not include the cost of bed and board, which makes up a large amount of care home costs. It is also up to local authorities to determine which care counts towards the policy, meaning people may end up spending more after all. And the policy is higher than the ￡25,000-50,000 recommended to the government by Andrew Dilnot, an economist who reviewed the market.
    From next month much will change for retirees, as the government drops the requirement to buy annuities with private pension pots. The government hopes that people will use the new flexibility to plan for their old age, including the possibility that their final years will be spent in a nursing home rather than on the Costa del Sol.
What do we learn from the last paragraph?
选项 A、The aging of population is becoming more and more serious in Britain.
B、The elderly often go to the Costa del Sol for their final years.
C、The older people in the nursing home can get protection from the government.
D、The government changes the policy to help people plan their later life.
答案D
解析 事实细节题。本题考查对最后一段内容的理解。原文最后一段指出，从下月开始，随着政府降低用私人养老金购买年金的要求，对退休人员来说将会有很大变化。政府希望人们利用新政策的灵活性来为自己的晚年做计划，包括他们晚年可能要在护理之家而不是西班牙的阳光海岸度过。D)是对这两句信息的整合，故为答案。A)“人口老龄化的现象在英国变得越来越严重”并非最后一段的内容，故排除；B)“老年人通常在西班牙的阳光海岸度过晚年”是对本段最后一句的曲解，根据原文可知，在西班牙的阳光海岸度过晚年是举例说明人们对自己的晚年的计划，而非一种事实，故排除；C)“护理之家的老年人能够得到政府的保护”，原文并未提及，故排除。
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