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Text 2 We're bringing health care to "where people live and work. " So declared Larry Merlo, CEO...

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We're bringing health care to "where people live and work. " So declared Larry Merlo, CEO of CVS Health, an American retail-pharmacy giant,announcing a $ 69 billion deal to buy Aetna, a heatth insurer.
One rationale for the deal-assuming the regulators wave it through-is for the merged firm to develop personalised health care that people can easily get access to. There is another, more defensive, impetus behind the deal-the prospect of Amazon going into prescription medicine. The American pharmaceutical market is an alluring one for the online giant. It is large, worth $ 450 billion in 2016. And it is widely regarded as inefficient, leaving customers without good information about products they are buying. Compared with books, toys and other bulky items, the drugs market would appear to be a nirvana for Amazon. Prescription medicines weigh almost nothing, take up little space and can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars per pill. But three barriers block the road to this idyll.
First, the sale and distribution of drugs is heavily regulated. Amazon would not be able to dump prescription drugs into the same fulfilment channels as its other products. It must acquire pharmaceutical licences for any state where it wishes to operate. Amazon would also need approval from the Food and Drug Administration at a federal level. Operating in a controlled industry would be a departure for a free-wheeling tech firm.
Second, most drugs are paid for by insurers, not by consumers. The pharmacy-benefits managers (PBMs), a sort of middlemen that buy drugs for insurers and companies, perform the complex task of matching purchases with patients' insurers, so that drugs are paid for. That is a source of the sort of opacity that Amazon would seek to remove. But the rcommerce firm would still need to handle issues of payment in the background, without keeping asking consumers for insurance details.
Third, although drugs do come in small packages, their shipping and handling often require special attention. Many drugs must be kept cold throughout the supply chain. Others are dangerous, and must be kept in locked cages. Yet these drugs are often also the most expensive. If Amazon cherry-picks drugs that fit well into its existing network, it will miss out on a large slice of the market. Customers could find it confusing to be able to get some prescriptions through Amazon's store but not others.
Amazon could find itself a partner, however. In July the boss of Express Scripts, a PBM, said it could use Amazon as an "efficient provider in networks". Or Amazon could buy what it needs. It might buy Rite Aid, a big pharmacy chain, giving it licences, a "cold-chain" infrastructure and Rite Aid's small PBM in one swoop. A prospect like that goes a long way to explaining the marriage of CVS and Aetna.
26. What prompted CVS to buy Aetna?
  • A. lts eagerness to bring health care to all.
  • B. Its desire to develop personalized medicine
  • C. Its concern over a potential threat
  • D. lts passion for prescription drug business

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Text 1
The European Commission's proposed tax on digital services is intended to make companies such as Google and Uber pay more. The idea is that such firms are gaming the rules at the expense of other taxpayers. The issue is real and needs to be addressed - but the answer under discussion breaks with both established international practice and plain common sense.
Formal talks on the plan are due to start this week. The commission is calling for a 3 percent tax on the turnover of large digital enterprises - those with EU digital revenues over 50 million euros and total global revenues of over 750 million euros. About half the companies affected would be American, the EU estimates.
The commission says it has been left with little choice. The value generated by digital companies doesn't require a physical presence, making them harder to rax. Digital businesses arrange their affairs to exploit this: They allocate income to low-tax jurisdictions and, according to officials, end up paying an effective tax of roughly 10 percent of profits, less than half of the burden carried by traditional businesses.
Officials acknowledge that the right solution is a thorough overhaul of the corporate tax code, especially as it affects international firms selling digital services - and that this should be done not unilaterally but in cooperation with other countries, notably the U. S. Efforts are in fact underway, but progress has been slow, and EU officials have chosen to do something, anything, as soon as possible.
Doing nothing would be better than this. For a start, the plan wouldn't raise much revenue - a meager 5 billion euros each year. And this supposedly fairer tax would bring abnormal results. For instance, companies such as Uber that don't make money will have a new cost to absorb; highly profitable firms with market power, such as Facebook, will be able to pass the tax on to their consumers. Small startups will be exempt from the new tax - unless they're acquired by larger companies. That will discourage consolidations. And the proposal as it stands may tax more activities than intended: Some financial services, for example, seem to be within its scope In its zeal to tax digital enterprises, the commission departs from many of its own stated principles. Its plan would probably require accessing individual, not just anonymized, user data. This runs counter to the EU's strict new rules on privacy, coming into force next month.
Efforts to design a multinational solution need to be stepped up, not set aside. The goal should be a fair, multilateral framework that recognizes the complexity of the new digital economy while respecting the sovereignty of nations to set their own tax policy. That's an international challenge demanding an international solution.
21. According to the first two paragraphs, the EU digital tax proposal
  • A. protects European industries from competition.
  • B. aims to updaic esiablished international practice.
  • C. is a blow to top digital companies.
  • D. binds only America's tech giants.
2 单选题 0分
Text 1
The European Commission's proposed tax on digital services is intended to make companies such as Google and Uber pay more. The idea is that such firms are gaming the rules at the expense of other taxpayers. The issue is real and needs to be addressed - but the answer under discussion breaks with both established international practice and plain common sense.
Formal talks on the plan are due to start this week. The commission is calling for a 3 percent tax on the turnover of large digital enterprises - those with EU digital revenues over 50 million euros and total global revenues of over 750 million euros. About half the companies affected would be American, the EU estimates.
The commission says it has been left with little choice. The value generated by digital companies doesn't require a physical presence, making them harder to rax. Digital businesses arrange their affairs to exploit this: They allocate income to low-tax jurisdictions and, according to officials, end up paying an effective tax of roughly 10 percent of profits, less than half of the burden carried by traditional businesses.
Officials acknowledge that the right solution is a thorough overhaul of the corporate tax code, especially as it affects international firms selling digital services - and that this should be done not unilaterally but in cooperation with other countries, notably the U. S. Efforts are in fact underway, but progress has been slow, and EU officials have chosen to do something, anything, as soon as possible.
Doing nothing would be better than this. For a start, the plan wouldn't raise much revenue - a meager 5 billion euros each year. And this supposedly fairer tax would bring abnormal results. For instance, companies such as Uber that don't make money will have a new cost to absorb; highly profitable firms with market power, such as Facebook, will be able to pass the tax on to their consumers. Small startups will be exempt from the new tax - unless they're acquired by larger companies. That will discourage consolidations. And the proposal as it stands may tax more activities than intended: Some financial services, for example, seem to be within its scope In its zeal to tax digital enterprises, the commission departs from many of its own stated principles. Its plan would probably require accessing individual, not just anonymized, user data. This runs counter to the EU's strict new rules on privacy, coming into force next month.
Efforts to design a multinational solution need to be stepped up, not set aside. The goal should be a fair, multilateral framework that recognizes the complexity of the new digital economy while respecting the sovereignty of nations to set their own tax policy. That's an international challenge demanding an international solution.
22. To which of the following would EU officials most probably agree?
  • A. Traditional business lax cut is necessary in the digital era.
  • B. The pace of global corporate tax reform is too slow.
  • C. Europe should reduce the number of Iow-tax jurisdictions.
  • D. Corporate tax code is being revised in favor of the U, S.
3 单选题 0分
Text 1
The European Commission's proposed tax on digital services is intended to make companies such as Google and Uber pay more. The idea is that such firms are gaming the rules at the expense of other taxpayers. The issue is real and needs to be addressed - but the answer under discussion breaks with both established international practice and plain common sense.
Formal talks on the plan are due to start this week. The commission is calling for a 3 percent tax on the turnover of large digital enterprises - those with EU digital revenues over 50 million euros and total global revenues of over 750 million euros. About half the companies affected would be American, the EU estimates.
The commission says it has been left with little choice. The value generated by digital companies doesn't require a physical presence, making them harder to rax. Digital businesses arrange their affairs to exploit this: They allocate income to low-tax jurisdictions and, according to officials, end up paying an effective tax of roughly 10 percent of profits, less than half of the burden carried by traditional businesses.
Officials acknowledge that the right solution is a thorough overhaul of the corporate tax code, especially as it affects international firms selling digital services - and that this should be done not unilaterally but in cooperation with other countries, notably the U. S. Efforts are in fact underway, but progress has been slow, and EU officials have chosen to do something, anything, as soon as possible.
Doing nothing would be better than this. For a start, the plan wouldn't raise much revenue - a meager 5 billion euros each year. And this supposedly fairer tax would bring abnormal results. For instance, companies such as Uber that don't make money will have a new cost to absorb; highly profitable firms with market power, such as Facebook, will be able to pass the tax on to their consumers. Small startups will be exempt from the new tax - unless they're acquired by larger companies. That will discourage consolidations. And the proposal as it stands may tax more activities than intended: Some financial services, for example, seem to be within its scope In its zeal to tax digital enterprises, the commission departs from many of its own stated principles. Its plan would probably require accessing individual, not just anonymized, user data. This runs counter to the EU's strict new rules on privacy, coming into force next month.
Efforts to design a multinational solution need to be stepped up, not set aside. The goal should be a fair, multilateral framework that recognizes the complexity of the new digital economy while respecting the sovereignty of nations to set their own tax policy. That's an international challenge demanding an international solution.
23. The author believes ihat the commission's tax plan would
  • A. ultimately harm consumers
  • B. benefit some financial services
  • C. help curb monopoly power
  • D. force privacy rules to be modified.
4 单选题 0分
Text 1
The European Commission's proposed tax on digital services is intended to make companies such as Google and Uber pay more. The idea is that such firms are gaming the rules at the expense of other taxpayers. The issue is real and needs to be addressed - but the answer under discussion breaks with both established international practice and plain common sense.
Formal talks on the plan are due to start this week. The commission is calling for a 3 percent tax on the turnover of large digital enterprises - those with EU digital revenues over 50 million euros and total global revenues of over 750 million euros. About half the companies affected would be American, the EU estimates.
The commission says it has been left with little choice. The value generated by digital companies doesn't require a physical presence, making them harder to rax. Digital businesses arrange their affairs to exploit this: They allocate income to low-tax jurisdictions and, according to officials, end up paying an effective tax of roughly 10 percent of profits, less than half of the burden carried by traditional businesses.
Officials acknowledge that the right solution is a thorough overhaul of the corporate tax code, especially as it affects international firms selling digital services - and that this should be done not unilaterally but in cooperation with other countries, notably the U. S. Efforts are in fact underway, but progress has been slow, and EU officials have chosen to do something, anything, as soon as possible.
Doing nothing would be better than this. For a start, the plan wouldn't raise much revenue - a meager 5 billion euros each year. And this supposedly fairer tax would bring abnormal results. For instance, companies such as Uber that don't make money will have a new cost to absorb; highly profitable firms with market power, such as Facebook, will be able to pass the tax on to their consumers. Small startups will be exempt from the new tax - unless they're acquired by larger companies. That will discourage consolidations. And the proposal as it stands may tax more activities than intended: Some financial services, for example, seem to be within its scope In its zeal to tax digital enterprises, the commission departs from many of its own stated principles. Its plan would probably require accessing individual, not just anonymized, user data. This runs counter to the EU's strict new rules on privacy, coming into force next month.
Efforts to design a multinational solution need to be stepped up, not set aside. The goal should be a fair, multilateral framework that recognizes the complexity of the new digital economy while respecting the sovereignty of nations to set their own tax policy. That's an international challenge demanding an international solution.
24. What is the ultimate goal that digital tax legislation should pursue?
  • A. Efficient unilateral solution.s.
  • B. Simplified corporate tax systems
  • C. A global cooperative approach
  • D. An anti-tax avoidance package