翻译硕士考研者，在暑期阶段需要看双语阅读文章，来提升阅读水平和翻译能力。下面，北京文都考研网为助力翻译硕士学子们在备考上一臂之力，整理了MTI双语阅读精选文章:医疗成爱尔兰统一的障碍，供考生参考。
2020考研MTI双语阅读精选:医疗成爱尔兰统一的障碍
AS THE UNITED KINGDOM prepares to slip its European moorings, the ties that bind it together are also under strain. In Northern Ireland, which (like Scotland) voted to remain, there is often talk that a “hard Brexit” could even build new momentum for a united Ireland. One reason for doubting this, however, can be summed up in a word: health.
英国准备放手与欧洲的关系之际，能维系两者的关系处于紧张状态。在(与苏格兰一样)投票支持留欧的北爱尔兰，经常有人说，“硬退欧”甚至会让爱尔兰统一势头兴起。然而，对此质疑的一个原因可以概括为：健康。
The 1.8m people of Northern Ireland enjoy free access to the British taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS). The Republic of Ireland’s 4.8m residents have to make do with something less appealing. “I know people up north whose life’s ambition is to see a united Ireland, and yet they worry when they see the health service we have down here,” says Louise O’Reilly, an MP in Dublin and health spokesperson for the all-island Sinn Fein party.
北爱尔兰有180万人口，能免费享受英国纳税人出资的国民健康服务(NHS)。爱尔兰共和国的480万居民不得不处理不那么吸引人的事情。 “我知道北爱人生活目标是看到一个统一的爱尔兰，但看到我们这里的医疗服务时，会感到担心，”都柏林议员兼全爱尔兰岛的新芬党卫生发言人路易斯·奥莱利说。
Ireland’s relatively high spending on health care—the seventh highest in the OECD, at $5,500 per head in 2017—is not matched by the level of service. In theory, public hospital care is free, but waiting lists for diagnostic procedures and publicly funded specialists can stretch for months, even years. An over-reliance on expensive hospital treatment, rather than care in GP clinics, has contributed to a chronic shortage of beds. On any given day, hundreds of patients will be waiting on trolleys in hospital corridors, sometimes for more than 24 hours, hoping for a proper bed. Ireland’s minority government is well aware that, along with the acute housing shortage, health is the issue on which they are most vulnerable.
爱尔兰在医疗保健的支出相对较高 ——2017年人均5,500美元，在经济合作与发展组织里排名第七——与获得的卫生服务水平不相称。从理论上讲，公立医院的服务是免费的，但等待诊断和公共资助专家的时间可以持续数月，甚至数年。过度依赖昂贵的医院治疗而不是全科诊所，致使床位长期短缺。每天都有数百名患者在医院走廊里坐在手推车里等候，希望能有一个合适的床位，有时超过24小时。爱尔兰的少数派政府清楚地知道：不仅是严重的住房短缺，健康也是他们最薄弱点。
Unlike their UK counterparts, some 60% of Irish people, mostly those who are not very old or very poor, have to pay up front in cash for primary health care: a single GP visit typically costs between €50 and €60 ($60-$68). The state only pays for medicines above a monthly threshold of €134.
与英国人不同，大约60%的爱尔兰人是中等收入的中年人，得预先支付现金用于初级医疗：每一次看全科诊所的话，通常要花50到60欧元(60～ 68美元)。爱尔兰每月支付的药费最低134欧元。
Junior doctors and nurses battle with long hours, stress and inadequate equipment in overcrowded and dingy old buildings. Many choose to take their training abroad. Meanwhile, a planned new National Children’s Hospital, originally billed at a hefty €650m, has seen its projected cost balloon to €1.73bn. In terms of cost per bed, an estimated €3.7m and climbing, it would be by far the most expensive hospital in the world.
一些刚入行的医生和护士在拥挤和肮脏的老旧建筑物中长时间工作，压力大，还要面对设备不足的情况。许多人选择在国外接受职业培训。与此同时，计划新建的全国儿童医院的最初投入高达6.5亿欧元，预计成本将达17.3亿欧元。按每张床的成本计算，估计为370万欧元且不断上升，将是迄今为止世界上投资最高的医院。
Experts blame much of the dysfunction on poor and piecemeal long-term planning, inadequate budget control and Ireland’s “two tier” public-private health system. In Ireland, unlike in most other EU countries, most specialists employed in publicly funded hospitals, already well paid by the state, are allowed to dedicate a portion of their time (typically 20%, though there is in practice little supervision) to private patients. These patients are often in the same public hospital and using publicly provided facilities. As a new EU country report noted last month, this “creates perverse incentives in publicly funded hospitals, where preferential treatment of privately insured patients adds to doctors’ private revenues”.
专家称，这个问题主要归咎于长期规划不善和零碎化，预算控制不足以及爱尔兰的“两级”公私医疗体系。与大多数其他欧盟国家不同，在爱尔兰，大多数在公立医院工作的专家是由国家付的高工资，并获准将用部分时间(通常是20%，尽管实际基本没有监督)于私人患者。这些患者通常在同一公立医院并使用对公众提供的设施。正如上个月新发布的一份欧盟国家报告所言述，这“在公立医院制造了不正当奖励措施，对有商业保险的患者的提供优惠医疗服务增加医生的个人收入”。
Róisín Shortall, a former junior health minister and joint leader of the centre-left Social Democrat party, notes that many worried families pay for no-frills health insurance (at an average annual cost of €1,850 in 2017), just to be able to skip lengthy queues. “Between 46% and 47% of Irish people are on private health insurance, which is by far the highest rate in Europe,” she says. Yet only 13% of the total Irish spend on health comes from private insurance, leading to the charge that the private sector is piggy-backing on the public one.
RóisínShortall曾担任过初级卫生部长，是中左翼社会民主党的联合领导人。他指出，许多忧心忡忡的家庭买简单医疗保险费(2017年的平均年度保费为1,850欧元)，只是为了不用排长队。 “有46%至47%的爱尔兰人使用私人医疗保险，是迄今为止欧洲最高的，”她说。然而，爱尔兰医疗总支出中只有13%来自私人保险，致使私营部门要支持公共医疗支出的费用。
Many Irish people are familiar with and envious of the UK’s NHS and in 2017 a cross-party committee of MPs voted unanimously in favour of Sláintecare (“Sláinte” means “health” in Irish), a detailed plan to introduce free and improved care at all levels of treatment. One key recommendation was the phasing out of private practice in public hospitals.
许多爱尔兰人都熟悉并羡慕英国的NHS，并在2017年，议员的跨党委员会一致投票支持Sláintecare(“Sláinte”在爱尔兰语中的意思是“健康”)——这是一个详细的计划，介绍免费和改善护理各级治疗。其中一项重要建议是逐步取消公立医院里的个人行医行为。
The government of prime minister Leo Varadkar, himself a doctor and former health minister, has said that it accepts the plan. In practice, though, it has done little to advance it. Ms Shortall says implementing the plan would require a €7bn ring-fenced investment over ten years. The government has so far voted it only €20m.
爱尔兰总理利奥·拉拉德卡尔(Leo Varadkar)本人是一名医生，曾担任过卫生部长。他表示爱尔兰政府接受上述计划。然而，在实践中，这项计划没有取得任何进展。Shortall表示，实施该计划需要在10年内投入70亿欧元的专项拨款。到目前为止，爱尔兰政府只投了2000万欧元。
Diarmaid Ferriter, a social historian at University College Dublin, says that resistance to reform comes partly from free-market ideology (the Republic throughout its history has always been ruled by alternating centre-right parties, never left-wing ones) and partly from the insurance industry and senior doctors. “In Ireland in the 1940s private medical practitioners were worried about a reduction in their income from what they saw as “socialised medicine”, and they brought the Catholic church on board, saying that if the state extended its reach it might start looking at contraception and things like that,” he says. “The church has declined in influence, but the power of the consultants has not.”
都柏林大学(University College Dublin)社会历史学家迪亚马里费里特(Diarmaid Ferriter)表示，对医疗改革的抵制一方面来自自由市场意识形态(爱尔兰历史上一直由交替的中右翼政党统治，而不是左翼政党)，一方面来自保险业和资深医生。 “在20世纪40年代的爱尔兰，私人医生担心他们的收入从他们所谓的”社会化医疗“中减少，他们引入天主教会，声称如果爱尔兰扩大其范围，可能会开始考虑避孕等类似的事情，”他说。“教会的影响力在下降，但医疗顾问的力量却没有。”
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