MAJORITY REPORT. 
Ad 
by. time at so much per session. The latter method 1s difficult 
of application, except where a clinic is established. The former 
is difficult to administer economically unless estimates are sub- 
mitted in advance and some system of inspection and supervision 
is provided. 
GENERAL (CONCLUSIONS. 
361. Reviewing all these considerations, we come to the con- 
clusion that no change should be recommended at present in the 
main provisions for dental treatment. A complete dental service 
would be eminently desirable. But it would cost about £4% 
millions a year, or 13d. on the contribution. A partial service 
has, as we have indicated, many defects and difficulties, medical 
as well as administrative. Any reasonable partial service would 
cost about £21 millions a year. Kven this smaller sum is not 
available within the present financial limits after provision has been 
made for those two extensions of benefit already described, which 
we think should rank higher in order of priority. Quite apart 
from financial considerations, there are indeed grounds on which it 
might be suggested that delay in this matter may not be wholly 
disadvantageous. ~~ The benefit, administered as an additional 
benefit, is still in an experimental stage, and much may yet be 
learned from further experience of its operation in its present 
form. On such questions as those of the cost involved, the 
reaction of dental treatment on health, possible methods of 
organisation and control, there is room for greater and more 
accurate knowledge than we possess at present; and it might 
reasonably be held that, in a matter of such great moment, we 
shall have a better prospect of building securely in the future, if 
meanwhile we are content to wait until a somewhat fuller experi- 
ence has been gained. In the varied system of provision of 
dental services as an additional benefit by numerous Approved 
Societies a useful arena for such experiment is given. Under 
these schemes 3,485 Societies and Branches in England, with a 
membership of about 10,700,000 insured persons, provide some 
form of dental treatment, and this number will certainly be 
increased when all the schemes under the second valuation be- 
come operative. In refraining from recommending dental treat- 
ment as a normal benefit, we are by no means leaving the insured 
persons without any provision at the cost of the insurance funds 
for the care of their teeth. Moreover, we consider that it is not 
irrelevant to the question before us to observe that the Dental 
Profession, consequent on the passing of the Dentists Act, 1821, 
is at present in a state of transition, and it might accordingly 
be suggested on various grounds that the present is an inoppor- 
tune moment to inaugurate a comprehensive scheme of dental 
benefit administered universally as a normal benefit under 
arrangements made by the Central Department on lines similar 
to those which govern medical benefit.