#15 - Health insurance insulates patients from the expense

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (B)

The first premise in this argument is that doctors have the opportunity to treat patients however they choose. The second premise is that the doctors have a financial incentive to overtreat patients. These premises then lead to a conclusion that because that opportunity and incentive exists, doctors therefore frequently do overtreat patients.

Answer Choice (A) Responsibility is being assigned in the stimulus to doctors, and the involvement of doctors in decisions on how much to treat patients is clearly not purely coincidental.

Answer Choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. Yes, the stimulus tells us that the opportunity is there and the incentive is there for doctors to overtreat. Based upon this information, it may be likely that doctors frequently overtreat in order to receive financial rewards, but it is not an absolute conclusion that follows from the premises. Therefore, the reasoning in the argument is flawed.

Answer Choice (C) At no point are the decisions of doctors in this stimulus presented as capricious and idiosyncratic. In fact, the decision to overtreat in order to receive financial reward could likely be seen as based upon well-defined principles, even if those principles are morally questionable.

Answer Choice (D) No choices in this stimulus have been depicted as arbitrary. The stimulus author clearly establishes a belief that doctors have specific reasons in mind for overtreating, it is just an issue of the author thinking that those reasons are unethical.

Answer Choice (E) This stimulus does not deal in any way with the irrelevance of certain considerations in making a decision. The focus is on considerations that the stimulus author feels are more relevant to the doctors' financial well-being, as opposed to the physical well-being of their patients.

[niki]

Hi,

What category does this question fall into?

Is it some evidence for a position is taken to prove that the position is true?

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Niki,

This is a Flaw in the Reasoning question. This question type is a member of the First Family of question types: the Prove family.

The speaker's conclusion was that medical procedures done by doctors are frequently prescribed only because of money. The speaker gave us evidence for why this would be possible, but there is no evidence for how frequently this is actually done. I would agree that you can say that the speaker gives us weak evidence for only a part of the conclusion, but assumes that it proves the entirety of the conclusion.

[niki]

thanks!

[Bruin96]

Would answer choice B also be correct because the stimulus fails to consider other reasons for why doctors prescribe medical procures? As answer choice B states that: "certain actions on no basis other than the existence of both..."

[James Finch]

Hi Bruin,

The stimulus is making the unfounded assumption that just because financial incentive exists for something to occur, then that must be the only potential cause for that thing. The "on no basis" absolutely accords with the issue of an unfounded assumption, while the "inferring actions" clearly refers to the prescribing medical procedures, with only the basis of opportunity and financial incentive, which are a 1:1 match with the given premises. So (B) exactly matches what's going on with the stimulus, both factually (opportunity and financial incentive as the two premises) and logically (an unfounded assumption.)

Hope this helps!