Earn a Million Pounds and the Government Tells All!

Boy, what a messed up socialized healthcare delivery system.

Read about the big money dentists in the U.K National Health Service here:

Names of £1m NHS dentists kept secret

Jonathon Carr-Brown, Health Correspondent

GOVERNMENT officials are coming under pressure to release the names of dental practices that are earning million-pound incomes in the National Health Service.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act by the government’s Dental Practice Board of England and Wales show that 50 practices are being paid close to, or more than, £1m a year. One was paid £2.2m by the taxpayer last year in fees.

The board is refusing to disclose the identities of these practices or even to say how many dentists work in them.

This comes despite a recent decision to publish data on subsidies paid to individual farmers. In addition, the payment of public money to lawyers under legal aid has long been public knowledge as have the salaries of senior public figures.

The dental board claimed this weekend that figures on the NHS earnings of individual dentists was “personal data” and as such was exempt from publication under the act.

The Sunday Times applied twice to the board under the Freedom of Information Act to release the data. As this resulted in only partial publication, the paper has this weekend appealed to Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, to rule on whether the board should release full data.

Simon Williams, chairman of the Patients Association, said the public was entitled to know which dentists had earned most from the taxpayer. “These figures should be published,” he said.

Read the rest here.

Wow! I wonder what they would say about routine dental practices here grossing 1.5 million dollars?