The RealBenefits Company Seek Capital Favor About one-third of Americans who quality for public assistance haven’t signed up

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问题                 The RealBenefits Company Seek Capital Favor
    About one-third of Americans who quality for public assistance haven’t signed up. That amounts to millions of people needlessly going without food stamps, low-income housing or health insurance.
    This trouble is what RealBenef its, a Boston-hasd software start-up, was created to solve. The five-person firm’s Web databae substitutes easy-to-use screening and enrollment tools for complicated government paperwork. So far RealBenefits has connected nearly 100,000 families to more than $371 million in government aid since 2000.
    Yet along with this success, Real-Benefits, which began life as a nonprofit, faced the same dilemma that many social enterprises do: how to scale up without selling out. "No software firm is going to attract donors easily, even a nonprofit," says Sharon Oster, dean of the Yale School of Management and an expert on social entrepreneurship.
    "And to grow, you need access to equity capital."
    So in 2006 , RealBenefits went commercial. Still tucked under the umbrella of founder Community Catalyst, the sales staff began slowly refocusing its energy on paying customers like hospital chains, governments and school districts rather than the community organizations and nonprofits that had previously peppered its client list. A subscription-based service, RealBenefits charges a fee that ranges from $ 10,000 for, say, a homeless-services group to six figures on the high end. "Our model was to find large healthcare providers whom be willing to pay because they were actually increasing reimbursements and minimizing uncompensated care by using our technology," says CEO Enrique Balaguer.
    At both ends, low-income families win. Whereas an uninsured patient going to the emergency room once faced a bill for thousands of dollars, now, using RealBenefits, hospital staff can screen him to see if he is qualified to file a claim with Medicaid. One Massachusetts hospital, Baystate Medical Center, reported a 50% increase in the number of Medicaid reimbursements it received in 2006 by using RealBenefits.
    Nonetheless, RealBenefits was still struggling to expand because of the difficulty of accessing capital. So the firm set out to find a buyer willing to continue its social mission. It eventually settled on TriHealix, a Connecticut-based health-care IT company.
    The June 2008 deal was worth $ 3 million to $4 million, Balaguer says.
    For RealBenefits, the transaction allowed it to tap into a larger sales and marketing force. The firm now aims to expand into at least 15 states over the next two to three years. "Our three core goals-to maximize benefits to families, effect policy change and to create additional capacity— remain in place," Balaguer says. "And being profitable is a major component of that." It’s a target that will most likely pay dividends to the whole community.
The reason why many Americans who qualify for public assistance haven’t signed up is that______.

选项 A、the application for social security is too complicated for many families
B、they can afford a life even without getting money from the government
C、they don’t know how to use computer database to submit applications
D、they would not get aid from governments even though they sign up

答案A

解析 推理判断题。由题干中的haven’t signed up定位到第一段。而第一段中并没有提及原因,结合第二段可知,作者对RealBenefits的服务内容作了介绍:使用易于操作的网络界面代替了复杂的政府纸质材料,从而帮助很多家庭获取了政府福利救助。由此我们可以推断之所以有这么多符合条件的申请人没有申请社会救助可能是因为申请过程过于繁复,很多人无法完成申请过程,故正确答案为[A]。由此我们也可以排除[C];第一段第二句说:这些没有得到社会福利帮助的人的生活状况是多么的困苦。所以如果可以很容易地得到社会福利救助的话,对他们的生活将是非常大的帮助,因此可以排除[B];[D]在文中没有依据,故排除。
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