A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
0 N at least one of the rare, regrettable occasions in the past when I have acted as locum tenens for Janus I have written something about health and there seems no need to apologise for reverting to the subject this week. If the Government want to reduce the cost of the National Health Service, why don't they offer a No Claim Bonus and see what happens,?
It would (I seem to hear you say) be very difficult to administer. I don't see why. Everybody has a medical card. Nobody can get anything under the National Health Act except through a doctor, a dentist, an oculist or some similar practitioner. All the practitioner has to do, on seeing a patient for the first time, is to ask for this document and punch a hole in the top right-hand corner with an engine similar to those used by bus-conductors. If some other healer has already done this, he takes no action ; under the Strix Scheme the maximum number of holes which could be punched in a citizen's medical card in a year would be dm. At the end of the year people whose cards were unperforated would present them at any Post Office whence—the card having been suitably stamped—they would draw (say) £2 in National Savings Certificates. In the following year the card would be punched in the top left-hand corner ; and so on.
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