In 2000, a mere two dozen products accounted for half the increase in spending on prescription drugs, a phenomenon that is explained not just because of more expensive drugs but by the fact that doctors are writing many more prescriptions for higher-cost drugs.
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Adam Gay
Hi Magoosh,
I am a little confused why a comma is sufficient to separate the 2 clauses. Can "a phenomenon.....higher-cost drugs" stand alone as an independent clause?
Good question! In this case, "a phenomenon ... higher-cost drugs" is not an independent clause. There is no main verb in this clause. Rather, the clause modifies the observation described in the first part of the sentence, which we can determine thanks to the presence of "that": the observation is "a phenomenon that is explained..." If "that" were not present, then the second clause could stand alone as a complete sentence and the use of a comma would not be sufficient to separate the two clauses of the sentence.
And the good news is that you don't need to undestand the scientific context, only the structure of the sentence :-)
Notice this part of the sentence "...who monitored its path, an expanding cloud of energized particles ejected from the Sun...". The word "its" logically refers to the nearest logically possible noun, which is, in this case, the expanding cloud. So that's what they monitored.
3 Explanations