The Dentists' Road to Serfdom
In two hours in the House of Commons on Monday some very profound morals were pointed by the case of the dentists, who are about to take a second cut of 10 per cent. in their remunera- tion, after the first cut of 20 per cent. imposed a year ago. Since the National Health Service first- complicated the link between dentist and patient, events have succeeded each other with something of the inevitability of classical tragedy. First came the temptation of the £1,800 a year recommended in the Spens report, and then the sweet reward of the first cheques from the Ministry of Health. But everybody knew from the start, that the system was crude and ill-planned, there was no guarantee that the best and most conscientious practitioners• would be the highest paid, and in total the dentists got too much. There is every reason to believe that a more discriminating relationship between dentists and patient would soon sort out the sheep from the goats and ensure that the highest incomes were earned by the best men ; but with long queues of patients and standard fees for each classifiable operation the balance cannot readily right itself. And so the Minister of Health falls back upon the rough injustice of an all-round cut. Mr. Baird's suggestion of a cut adjusted to a sliding scale is really little better than the Minister's, and might easily produce anomalies. His suggestion of a closer inspection of the work of dentists might do more to weed out the incompetent and reward the competent, but inspection is only one more step to control and direction. Once the State has undertaken to pay the bill it is almost Impossible for it to avoid taking new steps to see that the money is not being misappro- priated, and it is certain that, for the dentists, after the recent hectic but remunerative months, those new steps are going to hurt a little.
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