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  3. Death is a difficult subject for anyone, but Americans want to talk about it less than most. They have a cultural expectation th

Death is a difficult subject for anyone, but Americans want to talk about it less than most. They have a cultural expectation th

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问题     Death is a difficult subject for anyone, but Americans want to talk about it less than most. They have a cultural expectation that whatever may be wrong with them, it can be fixed with the right treatment, and if the first doctor does not offer it they may seek a second, third or fourth opinion. Legal action is a constant threat, so even if a patient is very ill and likely to die, doctors and hospitals will still persist with aggressive treatment, paid for by the insurer or, for the elderly, by Medicare. That is one reason why America spends 18% of its GDP on health care, the highest proportion in the world.
    That does not mean that Americans are getting the world’s best health care. For the past 20 years doctors at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice have been compiling the "Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care" , using Medicare data to compare health-spending patterns in different regions and institutions. They find that average costs per patient during the last two years of life in some regions can be almost twice as high as in others, yet patients in the high-spending areas do not survive any longer or enjoy better health as a result.
    Ira Byock is the director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Centre. His book is a plea for those near the end of their life to be treated more like individuals and less like medical cases on which all available technology must be let loose. With two decades’ experience in the field, he makes a good case for sometimes leaving well alone and helping people to die gently if that is what they want.
    That does not include assisted suicide, which he opposes. But it does include providing enough pain relief to make patients comfortable, co-coordinating their treatment among the different specialists, keeping them informed, having enough staff on hand to see to their needs, making arrangements for them to be cared for at home where possible—and not officiously keeping them alive when there is no hope.
    But it is not easy to decide when to stop making every effort to save someone’s life and allow them to die gently. The book quotes the case of one HIV-positive young man who was acutely ill with multiple infections. He spent over four months in hospital, much of the time on a ventilator, and had countless tests, scans and other interventions. The total bill came to over $ lm. He came close to death many times, but eventually pulled through and has now returned to a normal life. It is an uplifting story, but such an outcome is very rare.
    Dr Byock’s writing style is not everybody’s cup of tea, but he is surely right to suggest better management of a problem that can only get worse. As life expectancy keeps on rising, so will the proportion of old people in the population. And with 75m American baby-boomers now on the threshold of retirement, there is a limit to what the country can afford to spend to keep them going on and on.
According to Paragraph 1, the disproportional large spending in health care stems from______.
选项 A、Americans’ failure to admit death as part of their life
B、doctors’ inclination to overtreat the patient
C、a culture that is obsessed with youth and health
D、a legal system which has a bias in favor of patients
答案A
解析 文章第一段主要讨论了美国人对于死亡的态度。“死亡对于任何人来说都不是一个轻松的话题，但是美国对此最为讳莫如深”。美国人相信，无论他们得了什么病，只要通过适当治疗都可以恢复健康，一个医生不行，就看两个医生，三个医生或者四个医生……出于对医患纠纷的担忧，医院只能为病人(哪怕已经是奄奄一息的病人)提供激进的治疗方案。这最终导致了美国的高额医疗费用。因此，本题的正确答案应该选[A]。[B]选项错误，根据第一段内容我们可知，医生是出于对于医患纠纷的担忧才提供种种激进治疗方案，并非他们倾向给病人提供过度的治疗。[C]选项偷换概念，医疗费用高居不下是源于美国人对于死亡讳莫如深的文化，而不是对于青春和健康过分关注的文化。[D]选项偷换概念，第一段中提蓟了医院和医生对于医患纠纷的担忧，但是并没有提到司法仲裁偏袒病患。
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