GRE Argument Analysis - 1

Question
Statistics gathered over the past three decades show that the death rate is higher among those who do not have jobs than among those with regulat employment. Unemployment, just like heart disease and cancer, is a significant health issue. While many health care advocates promote increased government funding for medical research and public health care, it would be folly to increase government spending if doing so were to affect the nation's economy adversely and ultimately cause a rise in unemployment. A healthy economy means healthy citizens.

Response
The argument made in the above paragraph seems inherently flawed. It starts with an unsupported claim that death rate is higher among those who do not have job than among those with regular employment. Numbers will be useful here since it is very hard to co-relate between death rate and unemployment. The unemployed people demographics will also either lend credibility or question the meaningfulness of the stats. For instance, if more older people are unemployed, it will automatically lead to higher death raters. Another interesting number will the amount of time a person remains unemployed for before dying. A chronically unemployed person might have very bad financial conditions leading to early death. Also, if the above claims were to be true, then it means that people with less money cannot get good healthcare. It will also imply that healthcare in this country is very expensive and government usually do not provide cheap or free healthcare for its citizens.

Afterwards, author goes on to claim unemployment to be a significant health issue. The claim should be supported with more facts. Infact, a counter-argument can be that employed people usually work a lot more leading to worse health conditions. Also, work related stress can lead to more heart diseases. A study on the morale conditions of the unemployed might support this claim. For instance, in a meritocratic society an unemployed person might have significantly low morale leading to higher diseases. The earnings from the state to an unemployed person might be very low leading to bad lifestyle choices amongst unemployed people. This can also lead to significant health issues to unemployed people over the longer run.

Author hints that spending in medical research and public health care will harm the economy. On the other hand, it can be argued that spending will lead to more jobs in this sector thereby employing a lot many people. A detailed study of other alternative areas of investment along with the prospective return in the number of employed people will give a better credibility to the author's claims. Also, there are no statistics given that government spending in this area will lead to a worse economy. On the contrary, a healthy society will mean a healthier and more productive work-force leading to a better economy. Also, the research spending in health care could lead to selling of healthcare products in other countries thereby contributing to the economy.

Infact, the sentence makes an indirect assumption that a good economy will mean more jobs. There is no relationship established between a bad economy and unemployment rates. Certain countries around the world may not have a developed economy but still might have better employment rates. If an economy is more developed, it will invariably mean more automation, thereby leading to lesser jobs and more unemployment. Thus, spending towards improving the economy might lead to more unemployment which might lead to an unhealthy society going by the author's claims in the first half of the argument.

Thus, the claims made in this argument need to be more persuasive by conducting various studies into the demographics, morale and health conditions of the unemployed people vis-a-vis employed people. Also more effort needs to be put into the study of the existing healthcare systems and do they really need additional funding to make them more efficient. Also, identification of other areas of investment which might lead to a better economy leading to a better workforce is needed. Then only, a clear and a more powerful argument can be made towards cutting the spending in medical sector to boost economic growth.