Conclusion: "High-technology medicine is driving up the nation's health care costs."
Why? We know that due to recent advances, the operation now restores vision dramatically and is less expensive. We are told that these two factors have caused the number of cataract operations performed to increase greatly, which has, in turn, driven up the total amount spent on cataract surgery.
So, we know since the total amount spent on cataract surgery has gone up, despite the fact that the surgery is now less expensive, that means that the increase in surgeries makes up for what was saved due to the surgery being more expensive; otherwise, we could not say that the total amount spent on cataract surgery has gone up.
Therefore, it must be true that answer choice (C) is the correct answer as it clearly reiterates what is explained above: "The total amount spent on cataract surgery has increased because the increased number of people electing to have the surgery more than offsets the decrease in cost per operation."
Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
NativeJusticeMay 4, 2018
@naz thanks for the clear explanation. One more stupid question. Why is B incorrect?
