點(diǎn)擊查看：2017年12月大學(xué)英語(yǔ)六級(jí)考試閱讀理解100篇
Faced with the rapidly rising costs of employee benefits, companies are scaling back. It's become distressingly clear that employees are increasingly on their own when it comes to retirement savings and health care.
Employers don't typically trash (丟棄) an important employee benefit-too much negative press-but they are shifting more of these costs onto workers. who feel it in the form of higher health-care premiums, rising co-payments on drugs and much less certainty about their retirement finances.
Towers Perrin. a global human-resources-consulting firm, recently surveyed hundreds of U.S. companies representing more than 13 million employees on changer they are making-or contemplating making-to their employee-benefits packages. The knife cuts deepest on the most expensive benefits, with the biggest often being healty care.
It costs the average American company more than $14,000 per year to provide coverage to an employee and her family. The employer's response: shift more of that growing burden to workers. As a result, companies have seen their health-care spending rise 29% over the past five years.but employees have seen their outlays-for premiums, co-pays and deductibles-rise 40%.
Retiree health care is getting hit hardest-just when the boomer generation needs it most. Of the employerssurveyed, 45% have already reduced or eliminated subsidized health-care coverage for future retirees, and an additional 24% are planning to do so or considering it. Of those offering the perk(額外補(bǔ)貼), roughly 25% put a dollar limit on how much they will spend per retiree. "Once the limit is reached, future inflation risk transfers to the retiree," notes Ron Fontanetta. an executive with Towers Perrin.
Corporate pensions, the third leg of the proverbial retirement stool (the other two being Social Security and personal savings), are also being eroded as the foundering (下挫的) stock market wreaks havoc on employer pension funds. At the end of 2008. employer-sponsored pension plans were underfunded by more than $400billion, according to Mercer, a management-consulting firn. The recent stock-market rally has halved that deficit. but it remains a funding sore spot and is one more reason that companies are turning away from this benefit.
"Companies initiated many of these benefits in a different time," says Fontanetta. "Retiree benefits started being offered when many companies had a young workforce with few retirees. so it was not really a cost they had to contend with.” Today it's the reverse, particularly in old-line industries.Detroit’s Big Three automakers, for example, have more than Four rimes as many retirees as active hourly workers.
1. Instead of ending important employee benefits. employers are_____________.
2. According to Towers Perrin's survey, which 8spect of employee benefits is the most profoundly impacted?
3. The scaling down of retiree health greatly affected_________________.
4. Because of the stock market slump, companies are giving up_________________.
5. The last paragraph implies that companies cut back on retiree benefits because of_____________________.
答案：
1.[shifting more of these costs onto workers]
[定位]第2段第1句。
解析：原文的trash(丟棄)和題干中的ending表達(dá)的是相同的意思，都是說(shuō)雇主們并未真的停止提供福利，而是將福利成本轉(zhuǎn)移到員工身上。原文but后的內(nèi)容即是需要填入的正確答案。
2.[Health care.]
[定位]第3段末句。
解析：根據(jù)題干中Towers Perrin 查找到第3段。題干the most profoundly impacted 是對(duì)原文cuts deepest的近義改寫(xiě)。題目問(wèn)的是具體某方面的削減，答案在后面找，即員工福利削減最大的是醫(yī)療保健。
3.[the boomer generation]
[定位]第5段第1句。
解析：原文說(shuō)在boomer generation 最需要退休醫(yī)保的時(shí)候，退休醫(yī)保被削減最多，即退休醫(yī)保的縮減對(duì) the boomer generation 影響很大。
4.[corporate pensions]
[定位]第6段第1句及第3句。
解析：該段第1句提到，股市下跌對(duì)企業(yè)養(yǎng)老金基金產(chǎn)生極嚴(yán)重的破壞。最后一句說(shuō)，雖然股市有所反彈，但企業(yè)還是turning away from this benefit，題干giving up對(duì)應(yīng)原文turning away from，this benefit 指代的是 corporate pensions。
5.[the larger number of retirees]
[定位]最后一段最后一句。
解析：原文說(shuō)企業(yè)起初提供福利的情形和現(xiàn)在不同。原來(lái)退休員工很少，但是現(xiàn)在退休員工占多數(shù)，可以提煉成the larger number of retirees。
四六級(jí)萬(wàn)題庫(kù)下載 | 微信搜索"萬(wàn)題庫(kù)英語(yǔ)四六級(jí)考試"
相關(guān)推薦：
2017年12月大學(xué)英語(yǔ)六級(jí)高頻詞匯大全
考試吧整理：2017年大學(xué)英語(yǔ)六級(jí)語(yǔ)法知識(shí)匯總
2011-2017英語(yǔ)六級(jí)真題及答案|解析|估分|下載
2000-2017年6月英語(yǔ)六級(jí)聽(tīng)力下載(原文+MP3)
| 北京 | 天津 | 上海 | 江蘇 | 山東 |
| 安徽 | 浙江 | 江西 | 福建 | 深圳 |
| 廣東 | 河北 | 湖南 | 廣西 | 河南 |
| 海南 | 湖北 | 四川 | 重慶 | 云南 |
| 貴州 | 西藏 | 新疆 | 陜西 | 山西 |
| 寧夏 | 甘肅 | 青海 | 遼寧 | 吉林 |
| 黑龍江 | 內(nèi)蒙古 |
