This is GMATPREP question

61. Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than nonunion members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend less time with each.
(A) imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend
(B) imposing stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients, and spending
(C) that impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and spend
(D) that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, spending
(E) that impose stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients and spending

I Chose "E" but answer is not E. How to determine the correct answer in this case?

you have to realize which verbs are supposed to be parallel and which aren't. there's no grammatical formula for this; you have to examine the meaning of the sentence to figure it out.
- 'impose' (in whatever form) should be parallel to 'require' (again, in whatever form). these are two different things, both of which are aspects of the plan (= logical parallelism).
- 'spend' should not be parallel to 'see', because it functions as a modifier of 'see' (it's a descriptive adverb modifier, detailing the way in which the doctors see the patients).

choice a: 'spend' is ungrammatical here (it has no logical subject, and isn't parallel to anything).
choice b: imposing, requiring, and spending are all parallel, implying that the insurance plans do all three of these things (an absurdity in the last case).
choice c: all three verbs are parallel again, leading to the same absurdity witnessed in choice b.
choice d (= correct): the parallelism follows the model outlined above: only the verbs that are logically parallel appear in parallel structure.
choice e: 'requiring' and 'spending' are parallel in the modifier, implying that the plans themselves spend time with patients (in addition to requiring blah blah blah). this doesn't make sense.

In option "D" why spending is describing the action of "doctors" and not the insurance plan?

Why in option "E:" participle "spending" is modifying Insurance plan hence this option is wrong?

What are the rules against which above is explained?
Thanks

in choice e, parallelism dictates that requiring and spending refer to the same subject, which must be insurance plans. (you can't say doing X and doing Y if X and Y are done by different agents.)

in choice d, you could legitimately make a case that 'spending' could modify the entire huge clause about what insurance plans do, and is therefore ambiguous. however, that's the OA, so you've learned that this problem is ok in the eyes of the gmat people. if there's a rule that can be articulated here, it's probably something along the lines of 'participial modifier applies to nearest action'.

Thanks a lot Ron for clearing my doubts.

Hi moderators,

Would like to check the following concepts.

1. In this question, the subject is "union members" and object is "insurance plans"?

2. Assuming I am correct in that the subject is union members, therefore, we need to have "that" for the underlined portion, otherwise the underlined portion (without "that" as in A and B) would be describing union members? Is my concept correct?
"That" in C D E refers to insurance plans?

Thanks
KH

yes, "union members" is a subject and "insurance plans" is an object.

You do need "that" here. "Imposing" would generally modify the previous verb or the entire previous clause, not (just) the subject (though to do so correctly, there should also be a comma after "plans"). But that's not what I want anyway! I want to modify "plans" - the plans that impose stricter limits, etc.

_________________
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT

Hi Ron,
In choice D, should it be and that require...to make it parallel?? or that is understood here?
"...that impose stricter limits on medical services and (that) require doctors to see more patients, spending.."

choice (d) is the correct answer, so, no, it's not wrong.

this is going to sound like a statement of the perfectly obvious, but keep this in mind:
CORRECT ANSWERS ARE CORRECT.
if you're dealing with an official problem, then WHATEVER constructions you find in a correct answer are automatically correct.
therefore, you should not question those constructions; you should just try to figure out what makes them correct.

--

however:
your version of choice (d) would ALSO be correct.

for the reason why both of those constructions are ok, see this thread:
post25465.html#p25465

Thanks a lot Ron for your explanation.

i'm glad it helped!

_________________
Ben Ku
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

Hi Ron/Stacey,

I find lots of sentences in which "that" makes 2/3 split.
Can you please explain rules regarding "that". when it is required and when it can be omitted and what GMAC prefer, it will help us to split fast.
You can take this example or other to explain this.

Thanks,
Tapesh.

unfortunately, you are vastly underestimating the scope of this request.

there are LOTS of different ways in which "that" is used:
* it can introduce a clause (i noticed that the books were gone)
* it can be a relative pronoun (the books that were gone)
* it can be part of a parallel structure (the economy of country X is more stable than that of country Y)
* it can be an adjective (the economy of that country)

also, within each of these uses, there are a vast number of idiomatic and grammatical variations.

to summarize the complete usage of "that" would take tens, if not hundreds, of posts. so your only option is to post separate examples as your encounter them (and/or look through the problems in the forum and note any takeaways you get from them).