Claiming E:
Close-up
Again, the dialogue spoken by 白鳥 is broken down is two dialogue bubbles, ① & ②, starting from the right.
Starting with ①.
① 保険制度『の』おかげ『で』患者『の』支払う医療費『は』月数万程度［だ]『が』
There’s a lot of vocabulary here so I’ll make a table for easy reference.
| Japanese | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 保険制度【ほけんせいど】 | insurance regime |
| おかげ | assistance, benevolence |
| 支払う【しはらう】 | godan v. to pay, dict. form |
| 月【つき】 | moon, month |
| 数万【すうまん】 | tens of thousands |
| 程度【ていど】 | degree, standard |
| だん | copula, dict. form |
| が | particle, maybe the が used to soften request or what is being said |
I analyse the sentence as follows:
A. is what precedes the は, it introduces the topic of the sentence
B. is what follows the は which gives us information about said topic
A.
保険制度『の』おかげ『で』患者『の』支払う医療費[…]
保険制度 is the insurance regime which is linked to おかげ. I had mild apprehension regarding おかげ as I figured it would requires some research to understand properly.
So, as usual, I googled it:
おかげ can have a positive or negative meaning. You can tell by the context.
Hmm… that doesn’t help me much. Further research provided insightful information. Actually, I should approach it as おかげで.
thanks to; owing to; because of~
…and it’s used as a set construction which is exactly what I have right now!
Click to see
So, owing to the insurance regime… or, Thanks to the insurance regime.
Then comes 患者 which is the patient and then 支払う (to pay) + 医療費【いりょうひ】(doctor’s bill).
How do you call an expression where a verb is attributive to a noun next to it as one unit as in 支払う医療費?
Interpretation fir the first part of the first bubble
“Thanks to the insurance regime of the patient to pay the doctor bill…”
It’s worded a bit strange but that’s the essence of it.
Now for the second part of the first bubble.
月数万程度←だ so is. This is a descriptive sentence. Here, 月 can only mean month I think. 数万 means tens of thousands while 程度 means “degree”. “Degree” is too vague to be interpreted in this context, so I need to look at some sentences.
あなたはどの程度野球に興味があるのですか。
To what degree are you interested in baseball.
Hmm… that doesn’t help me.
So I’m a bit stuck at the last part. If you want to help please don’t give me the answer but give me a hint.