The ranks of the over 65s grew by 1.4m over the past decade. But old age wil

游客2023-07-04  23

问题     The ranks of the over 65s grew by 1.4m over the past decade. But old age will not be kind to all of them. One in three will develop dementia(痴呆), around one in six will end up in a nursing or care home and nearly half will need some forms of care. Few will have laid plans to pay for it.
    Knowing the dilemma of elderly voters, the government is moving to change that. Next year it will put & 72,000 on the sum that a person will have to pay towards care, and will raise the means-testing threshold(阀值)from £ 23,250 to £ 118,000.
    The government had hoped that this reform would not just relieve elderly nerves but also stimulate an insurance market for end-of-life care. Unfortunately, that is not happening.
    Many people continue to assume, wrongly, that the NHS will pay, says Yvonne Braun from the Association of British Insurers. And most are overly optimistic about their health in old age, underestimating(低估)the risks and costs they will suffer. Joan Costa-Font, from the London School of Economics, adds that the idea of care insurance seems to conflict with social values. A kind of familial moral hazard kicks in, as people fear their children will no longer look after them if they are insured.
    Care costs are so hard to predict that insurers tend to protect themselves with big insurance expenses, making insurance difficult to afford. The government’s new policy, which was supposed to sort this out, comes with alarming warnings. It does not include the cost of bed and board, which makes up a large amount of care home costs. It is also up to local authorities to determine which care counts towards the policy, meaning people may end up spending more after all. And the policy is higher than the £25,000-50,000 recommended to the government by Andrew Dilnot, an economist who reviewed the market.
    From next month much will change for retirees, as the government drops the requirement to buy annuities with private pension pots. The government hopes that people will use the new flexibility to plan for their old age, including the possibility that their final years will be spent in a nursing home rather than on the Costa del Sol. [br] The government issued the new policy with the purpose of______.

选项 A、controlling the expensive insurance charges
B、warning the illegal insurance companies
C、predicting the care expenses accurately
D、helping the insurers to reduce the risks

答案 A

解析 事实细节题。本题考查政府制定新政策的目的。倒数第二段第二句提到,政府新出台的旨在解决这一问题的政策带有强烈的警示意味。这一问题指的就是上文中提到的护理费用的难以预测也使得保险公司倾向于抬高保险费用来保护自己,而这些费用昂贵得令人难以承担。A)是对本句的同义转述,故为答案。B)“警告非法的保险公司”、C)“准确地预测护理费用”和D)“帮助保险公司降低风险”都不是政府制定新政策的目的,故排除。
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