GREAT BRITAIN: 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...

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