A

Companies can save millions in health­care costs simply by encouraging their employees to exercise a little bit.Researchers report that obese employees have higher health­care costs, but they can lower those expenses by  exercising just a couple of times a week — without even losing any weight.

Feifei Wang and his colleagues at the University of Michigan studied 23,500 workers at General Motors.They estimated that getting the most obese workers to exercise would have saved about $790,000 a year, or about 1.5 percent of health­care costs for the whole group.Company­wide, the potential savings could reach $7.1 million per year, according to their report published in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Of the whole group of workers, about 30 percent were of normal weight, 45 percent were overweight, and 25 percent were obese. Annual health­care costs averaged $2,200 for normal weight, $2,400 for the overweight, and $2,700 for obese employees. But among workers who did no exercise, health­care costs went up by at least $100 a year, and were $3,000  a year for obese employees who were sedentary (¾Ã×øµÄ)£®

But adding two or more days of light exercise — at least 20 minutes of exercise or work hard enough to increase heart rate and breathing — lowered costs by on average $500 per employee a year, the researchers found. “This indicates that physical activity behavior could lessen at least some of the negative effects of excess body fat, and in consequence, help lower the increasing health­care costs£¬” Wang and his colleagues wrote.

21. The  researchers believe companies can spend far less on health­care costs by________.

A£®encouraging employees to lose weight

B£®limiting the number of obese employees

C£®persuading employees to do physical activities

D£®limiting the employment of sedentary workers

22. What does the underlined word “obese” in Paragraph 2 mean?

A£®Too strong.¡¡¡¡B£®Too tall.

C£®Too big.    D£®Too fat.

23. Who were those that the researchers studied?

A£®Some workers from a car­making company.

B£®Some students from the University of Michigan.

C£®A group of obese patients in a Michigan hospital.

D£®The most obese group of workers at General Motors.

24.How much could General Motors save a year according to Wang’s study?

A£®$790,000.¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ B£®$7.1 million.

C£®$52.67 million.           D£®$11.75 million.