The Doctors' Bill

On a chilly street corner in London's threadbare Hammersmith, a Tory soapboxer looked out over the crowd of housewives, clerks and workingmen. "What's left in your wage packet after this government has taken its share of taxes and national insurance?" he shouted. "Aw, stuff a sock in it!" yelled a heckler in the crowd and promptly launched into a speech of his own. He had spent six'weeks in a hospital, his wife had a baby, his mother got spectacles and new dentures, his brother got a long-needed truss, and "all under this Labor government," he cried belligerently.

No Bruising. His story was a common one to Britons who, for the last eight months, have trooped into doctors' and dentists' offices to get free medical care under the Labor government's National Health Service. Last week the government delivered the bill for all the spectacles, dentures and trusses. Like many a doctor's bill, it was a shocker.

The cost of a national health service had originally been estimated at -L-100 million annually, then revised upwards an additional -L-61 million by the time the plan went into effect last July. Now, eight months later, Health Minister Aneurin ("Nye") Bevan announced that the Health Service would need -L-58,455,000 more than its budget had planned. Thundered Winston Churchill: "Grossest carelessness . . . wild miscalculations . . ."

The Tories could cite some whopping examples. Bevan's budget had set aside -L-2 million for spectacles, but Britons--many of whom previously fitted their own specs at Woolworth's--had run up the cost by a cool -L-11 million over that. Bevan had been 550% off in his estimate. About a fifth of Britain's population had sat its turn in the dentists' chairs; the bill was -L-12 million (250%) over Bevan's estimate.

But the Tories thought twice before attacking what had proved to be one of Labor's most popular measures. In the House of Commons last week, Churchill declared that the vote of censure he had called for would be postponed. As he strolled out of the chamber, leaving Bevan lolling confidently on the government front bench, one Tory ruefully said: "The champ's quit. There'll be no bruising today."

Teeth In the Harbor. With the champ gone, the Tory seconds swarmed in on Bevan like an army of Lilliputians--but in vain. Why and how, they wanted to know, had Bevan come to be so inaccurate in his estimates. Protested one Tory: "If a business firm or a contractor made such a ghastly error, he would go bankrupt."

Bevan was unabashed. The figures simply meant, he said, that more Britons needed medical care than anyone suspected. "Insofar as the figures show that suffering is being relieved," cried Bevan, "we should be proud!" Though initially reluctant, 90% of Britain's dentists and 86% of her physicians had now joined the plan. "Had they not come in," Bevan declared triumphantly, "I should not have had a deficit, but a surplus. I should have been praised by the Opposition for being a financial success--but I should have been a failure as a Minister of Health!"

Labor members whooped and cheered. Bevan got his extra -L-58 million. A fitting epilogue came from Bristol, where a workingman feeding sea gulls sneezed his false teeth into the harbor and was voted a new set by the local health officials. Generously, they held he had lost his teeth "by accident and not carelessness."

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