Question
When Medicare was enacted in 1965, it was aimed at the prevention of a catastrophic illness from financially destroying elderly patients.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Solution
- When Medicare was enacted in 1965, (Dependent Clause – modifies the main verb “was aimed at”)
- it was aimed at the prevention (Main Clause)
- of a catastrophic illness (Prepositional Phrase – modifies “prevention”)
- from financially destroying elderly patients. (Prepositional Phrase – modifies “prevention”)
The sentence provides the original aim of Medicare. The sentence seems to say that the aim was to prevent a catastrophic illness from financially destroying elderly patients.
The sentence has the following problems:
- As is, the sentence means that the law, Medicare, was aimed at preventing a catastrophic illness – this doesn’t make much sense. How can a law prevent people from suffering catastrophic illnesses?
- The modification of “prevention” by “from financially destroying elderly patients” doesn’t make sense since “prevention from (financially destroying) patients” doesn’t make sense.
Option Analysis
(A) Incorrect. For the reasons mentioned above.
(B) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- The phrase “aimed at being a preventive against illness” is sufficiently awkward. For example, we don’t say “This protest is aimed at being a demonstrator for the injustice”; we say “This protest is aimed at demonstrating the injustice”.
- In this option, “financially destroying elderly patients” is a verb-ing modifier for the “illness”. Thus, the option means that the law was aimed at preventing some kind of illness. What kind of illnesses? The kind of illnesses that are financially destroying elderly patients. This aspect – the law aimed at preventing illnesses – doesn’t make sense.
(C) Correct. This option says that the law was aimed at preventing x from doing y i.e. the aim was that x should not be able to do y. In other words, the aim was that a catastrophic illness should not be able to financially destroy elderly patients. That makes a lot of sense. Financial aid could be provided to elderly people who are suffering from a catastrophic illness so that they don’t get financially destroyed.
(D) Incorrect. This option has the second error of option B.
(E) Incorrect. This option says that the law is trying to prevent elderly patients! Doesn’t make sense. Also, “being financially destroyed” is a verb-ing modifier for “patients”, meaning that we are talking about patients that are currently being destroyed by a catastrophic illness. Again, doesn’t make sense.
Please note that while the official explanation says that “aimed to” is incorrect, this use is quite common in credible publications such as WSJ.com and Nytimes.com. Thus, we do not consider this construction incorrect.
If you have any doubts regarding any part of this solution, please feel free to ask in the comments section.
This solution was created by Chiranjeev Singh and Anish Passi.
Hi CJ,
I am unable to understand why “from.. elderly patients” in the original sentence should modify prevention, shouldn’t it modify illness since the preposition “from” is linking illness to financially destroying?
Also, thank you for the SC explanations, they are really helpful!
Does “illness from financially destroying” make sense? By modifying “illness”, are we talking about a specific illness?
We want to prevent from doing something. Right? Thus, “from financially destroying” is modifying “prevention”.
Got it, makes sense.
Thank you CJ for the explanation.
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