Passage Five Faith in medicine runs deep in America. We spend more per person on health care than any other nation. Whether we eat too much or exercise too little, whether we’re turning gray or feeling blue, we look to some pill or procedure to make us better.We assume that devoting ever more dollars to medicine will bring us longer, healthier lives. But there is mounting evidence that each new dollar we devote to the current health care system brings small and diminishing returns to public health. Today the United States spends more than $4,500 per person per year on health care. Costa Rica spends less than $300. Yet life expectancy at birth is nearly identical in both countries.Despite the highly publicized "longevity revolution," life expectancy among the elderly in the United States is hardly improving. Yes, we are an aging society, but primarily because of falling birthrates. Younger Americans, meanwhile, are far more likely to be disabled than they were 20 years ago. Most affected are people in their thirties, whose disability rates increased by nearly 130 percent, due primarily to overweight.Why has our huge investment in health care left us so unhealthy Partly it is because so many promised "miracle cures," from interferon to gene therapies, have proven to be ineffective or even dangerous. Partly it’s because health care dollars are so concentrated on the terminally ill and the very old that even when medical interventions "work," the gains to average life expectancy are small And partly it is because of medical errors and adverse reaction to prescription drugs, which cause more deaths than motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. Each year roughly 200,000 seniors suffer fatal or life-threatening "adverse drug events" due to improper drug use or drug interaction.Why don’t Americans live any longer than Costa Ricans Overwhelmingly, it’s because of differences ill behavior. Americans exercise less, eat more, drive more, smoke more, and lead more socially isolated lives. Even at its best, modern medicine can do little to promote productive aging, because by the time most people come in contact with it their bodies are already compromised by stress, indulgent habits, environmental dangers and injuries. It is implied in the last paragraph that()
A. medicine should be taken timely before it is too late
B. poor health conditions leave little room for medicine to work
C. great efforts should be made to develop new types of medicine
D. it is reasonable to question the effectiveness of medicine
Passage Four In a recent Sunday school class in a church in the Northeast, a group of eight-to ten-year- olds were in a deep discussion with their two teachers. When asked to choose which of ten stated possibilities they most feared happening their response was unanimous. All the children most dreaded a divorce between their parents.Later, as the teachers, a man and a woman in their late thirties, reflected on the lesson, they both agreed they’d been shocked at the response. When they were the same age as their students, they said, the possibility of their parents’ being divorced never entered their heads. Yet in just one generation, children seemed to feel much less security in their family ties.Nor is the experience of these two Sunday school teachers an isolated one. Psychiatrists revealed in one recent newspaper investigation that the fears of children definitely do change in different periods; and in recent times, divorce has become one of the most frequently mentioned anxieties. In one case, for example, a four-year-old insisted that his father rather than his mother walk him to nursery school each day. The reason He said many of his friends had "no daddy living at home, and I’m scared that will happen to me."In line with such reports, our opinion leaders expressed great concern about the present and future status of the American family. In the poll 33 percent of the responses listed decline in family structure, divorce, and other family-oriented concerns as one of the five major problems facing the nation today. And 26 percent of the responses included such family difficulties as one of the five major problems for the United States in the next decade.One common concern expressed about the rise in divorces and decline in stability of the family is that the family unit has traditionally been a key factor in transmitting stable cultural and moral values from generation to generation. Various studies have shown that educational and religious institutions often can have only a limited impact on children without strong family support. It is implied in the passage that()
A. Sunday school teachers are different from public school teachers
B. family has stronger impact on children than other social institutions
C. in a decade family-oriented concerns will be the same as they are now
D. parents’ divorce has long been children’s biggest fear