March brought crazy attention to Barack Obama’s health law. The Supreme Court heard arguments over its constitutionality. Outsid

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问题     March brought crazy attention to Barack Obama’s health law. The Supreme Court heard arguments over its constitutionality. Outside the court, supporters waved their neatly printed posters and tea-partiers waved their scrawled, angry ones. The arguments centred on Mr. Obama’s mandate to buy insurance. America is the rare Western country without a universal insurance scheme. But, as a new study points out, a lack of insurance is only part of America’s health problem.
    On April 3rd the University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropic outfit, released a new report on health in America’s counties. The report is part of a string of efforts to sort through the mounds of data on health and the factors that affect it. The jumble of information does not reveal a perfectly clear picture. But it begins to illuminate the particular nature of America’s health and why it is so gloomy.
    America, it is often noted, spends more on health care yet has worse results than other rich countries. Its infant-mortality rate, for example, is double that of Sweden, Germany and France(to name only a few). A closer look reveals conflicting trends within America itself. A recent ranking of states’ health, sponsored by the foundation of United Health, America’s biggest insurer, was filled with contradictions. America is making good progress to reduce smoking and the death of infectious disease, yet diabetes rates are climbing and tens of millions remain uninsured. The north-east is a picture of health compared with the South. Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts are among the five healthiest states; Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana are the lowest. Resources vary wildly from one state to another. Massachusetts has 192 primary-care doctors for every 100,000 people; Idaho has just 78. Behaviour is similarly spotty. In Florida whites are 30% more likely to smoke than blacks. In Minnesota the reverse is true.
    The new report takes an even closer look, inspecting data for more than 3,000 counties. The authors, led by Bridget Booske Catlin of the University of Wisconsin, rank each state’s counties according to health outcomes: premature death, poor mental and physical health and low birth weights for babies. Separately, they examine the factors that influence health, such as clinical care, income and behaviour.
    Wide gaps existed within each state. The five least-healthy counties generally had more than twice the teenage birth rate of the five healthiest counties, and more than twice the share of poor children. Within counties, factors seem to contradict one another. In Putnam, New York’s healthiest county, 29% of adults are obese, compared with 28% in the Bronx, New York’s least-healthy county. Putnam also has higher rates of binge drinking—21% compared with 14% in the Bronx. Yet the Bronx has lower education rates, eight times the rate of teen pregnancies and New York’s highest concentration of fast-food restaurants. Lack of insurance, therefore, is only part of the puzzle.
What can we learn about the contradictions within America’s health?

选项 A、Most people in the north-east counties remain uninsured.
B、Death rates of smoking are climbing and hard to control.
C、They are also common phenomena in Germany and France.
D、America has done a good job in dealing with infectious disease.

答案D

解析 事实细节题。根据题干定位到第三段。该段第五句提及“美国在减少吸烟和传染病死亡人数方面成果斐然”。由此可知[D]为正确答案。由第三段第六句“东北部地区健康状况好于南部地区”可排除[A];由第三段第五句“美国在减少吸烟和传染病死亡人数方面成绩斐然”可排除[B];第三段第一、二句提及“美国的医保花销多于其他富裕国家,成绩却不尽如人意。比如说,美国的新生儿死亡率是瑞典、德国、法国等国的两倍。”[C]与此不符,故排除。
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