Choose the main pattern of organization of the passage. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 enabled more than 20 million previously uninsured Americans to gain access to healthcare. Yet costs have continued to rise—making healthcare unaffordable for many everyday people. So how can our country control costs while providing healthcare for all? A single-payer system would allow the government to negotiate prices and use tax revenues to pay for universal coverage. Virtually every other industrialized country uses a single-payer system—providing better care at less than half the cost. And in comparison with private, for-profit insurance companies, our own single-payer system, Medicare, provides greater access with much lower administrative costs. In fact, the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that Medicare spends less per person on care and controls spending more effectively than private insurers. So instead of subsidizing insurance companies, why don’t we skip the “middlemen” and spend our money directly on healthcare for all Americans?

Choose the main pattern of organization of the passage. Words have two kinds of meanings—denotative and connotative. Denotative meaning is precise, literal, and objective. It simply describes the object, person, place, idea, or event to which the word refers. One way to think of a word’s denotative meaning is as its dictionary definition. For example, denotatively, the noun school means “a place, institution, or building where instruction is given.” Connotative meaning is more variable, figurative, and subjective. Put simply, the connotative meaning is what the word suggests or implies. For instance, the connotative meaning of the word school includes the feelings, associations, and emotions that the word touches off in different people. For some people, school might connote personal growth, childhood friends, and a special teacher. For others, it might connote frustration, discipline, and boring homework assignments.

Choose the main pattern of organization of the passage. An airplane is supported in flight by air passing across its wings. Air traveling over the wings moves farther and faster than air traveling under the wings. As a result, the air pressure is lower above the wings, and the wings experience an upward lift force. This lift force decreases at low airspeeds, so most commercial jet airplanes must alter the shapes of their wings during takeoffs and landings.

Choose the main pattern of organization of the passage. The placebo effect is an apparent cure or improved state of health brought about by a substance, product, or procedure that has no generally recognized therapeutic value. For instance, it is not uncommon for patients to report improvements based on what they expect, desire, or were told would happen after taking simple sugar pills that they believed were powerful drugs. Although the placebo effect is generally harmless, it does account for the expenditure of millions of dollars on health products and services every year. Megadoses of vitamin C have never been proven to treat cancer. Mud baths do not smooth wrinkled skin, nor do electric shocks reduce muscle pain. People who mistakenly use placebos when medical treatment is urgently needed increase their risk for health problems.

Choose the main pattern of organization of the passage. In the early 1900s, few people understood what could be done with rockets, and financial support for rocket development was difficult to obtain. It was not until 1926 that Robert Goddard launched the first liquid fuel rocket. Despite Goddard’s successes, rocket development in the United States proceeded very slowly with little government interest. It was Germany that brought about the rapid development of liquid fuel rockets in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The German V2 rocket, developed under the direction of Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), was the first missile to travel faster than the speed of sound, covering approximately 200 km in 5 minutes. The V2 was a potent terror weapon, and thousands were launched toward Antwerp and London during World War II. After the war, the Allies carted off every source of information about V2 technology that they could find, including von Braun himself, who eventually helped the United States put a man on the moon.

Choose the main pattern of organization of the passage. For years, various sociologists have struggled to determine the causes of poverty in America. One approach holds that the poor are primarily responsible for their own poverty. Throughout our history, people in the United States have valued self-reliance, convinced that social standing is mostly a matter of individual talent and effort. This view sees society as offering plenty of opportunity to anyone able and willing to take advantage of it. From this point of view, the poor are those who cannot or will not work, women and men with fewer skills, less schooling, and little motivation. An alternative position holds that society is primarily responsible for poverty. Sociologists who hold this view point to the loss of jobs in our inner cities as the primary cause of poverty, claiming there is simply not enough work to support families. Thus, it is a lack of opportunity—not a lack of effort—that causes poverty.

Choose the main pattern of organization of the passage. Both our 17th president, Andrew Johnson, and our 42nd president, Bill Clinton, were raised by hard-working single mothers. Both were Southern Democrats. Both were impeached. Yet these superficial similarities in the careers of the two men mask dramatic differences between them. When Andrew Johnson fired Secretary of War Stanton, he was charged with violating the Tenure of Office Act, a law that probably was unconstitutional. His impeachment took place against the backdrop of a national debate over the course of post-Civil War Reconstruction, a debate that was intensely ideological. In contrast, Bill Clinton was charged with lying and obstructing justice, charges that stemmed from an extramarital affair the president had conducted with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clinton’s impeachment reflected the bitter partisanship and personal animosity between Democrats and Republicans in the 1990s.

Most members of African-American congregations expected __________.  

__________ became known as the “father of Negro history.”

Which of the following was true of the Great Migration?