Stunning Sums

The cost of helping the nation's victims of disease and misfortune is high. Every time HEW provides a life-saving dialysis for one of its 40,000 patients with impaired kidneys, it spends $146.79; each patient costs $22,900 a year. Each of the 442,000 disadvantaged youngsters being prepared for school through Head Start costs the Government $ 1,604 a year. Each of the 21.5 million Americans on Medicaid costs HEW an average of $532 annually.

The sums needed by HEW are so huge in fact that the Niagara of dollars that flows out to Americans can be rendered comprehensible only when placed, quite unfairly, in a wholly different context. If, for example, the money HEW plans to spend next year were given instead to all Americans, every man, woman and child in the U.S. would receive $824.79.

Another such way of looking at HEW's annual cost is to compare its budget with the price tag of the 25th birthday party it threw at its Washington headquarters two weeks ago. The department celebrated with a two-day bash for 8,000 of its employees and beneficiaries that included outdoor concerts, a chicken barbecue and performances by Sesame Street's Big Bird, whose creation was funded by HEW. The price of the whole thing was $15,000--no small sum; yet, based on an eight-hour working day, the cost amounted only to about what HEW disburses every second.

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