total bill came to over $1m. 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.
36. According to Paragraph 1, the disproportional large spending in health care stems from
[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
37. The author cited the findings of Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical practice to illustrate that
[A] the medical care quality differs widely from region to region
[B] there is little that hospitals can do in saving people's lives
[C] a lot of medical resources are wasted
16
[D] the American medical system is notorious for its low cost-effectiveness
38. The central idea of Ira Byock's book is to appeal to the hospital to
[A] save every life with every possible means [B] help people to die if that is his/her will
[C] make people feel comfortable in their remaining hours
[D] consider whether the cure is worthwhile before conducting it
39. In the author's opinion the example of the HIV-positive young man in Paragraph 5
[A] eliminates the possibility of applying gentle dying process in medicare
[B] is merely an extreme case that should not be taken as a standard
[C] emphasizes the importance of aggressive treatment even with slim hope
[D] is used as an irony of the current state of American medical system
40. According to the author, the American government will the proposal of gentle dying [A] disapprove of [B] divide at [C] hesitate at [D] side with
Part B
Directions:
Reading the following text and answer the questions by finding a subtitle for each of the marked
17
parts or paragraphs. There are two extra items in the subtitles. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points)
[A] Convincing evidence: US is losing its appeal in the eyes of multinationals
[B] Biggest hindrance: US divided political system [C] American future: stuck in the middle
[D] Overstated statement: US overall competitiveness is declining
[E] Voice of experts: pessimism pervades academic world
[F] Economic outlook: bad but not desperate
[G] Undisputed fact: US is losing its economic edge 41.
Is America fading? America has been gripped by worries about decline before, notably in the 1970s, only to roar back. But this time it may be serious. There is little doubt that other countries are catching up. Between 1999 and 2009 America’s share of world exports fell in almost every industry: by 36 percentage points in aerospace, nine in information technology, eight in communications equipment and three in cars. Private-sector job growth has slowed dramatically, and come to a halt in industries that are exposed to global competition. Median annual income grew by an anemic 2% between 1990 and 2010. 42.
The March issue of the Harvard Business Review is
18
devoted to “American competitiveness”. The Review reports that declinism is prevalent among HBS alumni: in a survey, 71% said that American competitiveness would decline in the coming years. 43.
America is losing out in the race to attract good jobs. Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business points out that multinational firms increased employment in America by 24% in the 1990s. But since then they have been cutting back on jobs in America. They have moved dull repetitive tasks abroad, and even some sophisticated ones, too. The proportion of the employees of American multinationals who work for subsidiaries abroad rose from 21.4% in 1989 to 32.3% in 2009. The share of research-and-development spending going to foreign subsidiaries rose from 9% in 1989 to 15.6% in 2009; that of capital investment rose from 21.8% in 1999 to 29.6% in 2009.
44.
America’s political system comes in for particularly harsh criticism: 60% of HBS alumni said that it was worse than those in other advanced countries. David Moss of HBS argues that such complaints are nothing new: American politicians have been squabbling about the role of government ever since Thomas Jefferson butted heads with Alexander Hamilton. But in the past this often led to fruitful compromises. But such compromises are
19
rarer these days. Republicans and Democrats are more ideologically divided, and less inclined to make pragmatic concessions. 45.
For all this gloom, the Review’s gurus argue that, as Bill Clinton said in his first inaugural address, there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. The country has huge strengths, from its world-beating universities to its tolerance of risk-taking. It has a highly diverse market: firms that seek cheap labour can move to Mississippi, where wages are a third lower than those in Massachusetts. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of HBS points to the extraordinary amount of innovation that is going on not just in Silicon Valley but across the country.
Yet it is difficult to read this collection of essays without a sense of foreboding. The one thing that worries the HBS alumni more than anything else—the state of American politics—is the most difficult to fix. The political pendulum swings unpredictably, making it hard to plan for the future. Should companies assume that they will have to abide by Mr Obama’s health-care law when it comes into effect in 2014, or will the Republicans have repealed it by then? No one knows.
Section III Translation
46. Direction:
Translate the following text from English into
20
2018考研英语二模拟试卷2与答案
