It's much worse than we thought, bleat Frank Dobson and his timid team of health ministers as they survey the wreckage of the NHS left by the Tories. This is a miserable excuse for the fact that Labour seems already to have abandoned even its limited promises on health services, and embarked instead on "thinking the unthinkable" and suggesting the indefensible.
The accounts of many trusts and health authorities appear as a sea of red ink, with 37 health authorities carrying forward debts of £3,186m and 111 trusts sharing debts of £3,123m from last year: for these and many others the picture for 1997-8 is even worse.
The Tory cash limits to which Gordon Brown signed up before the election threaten over the next two years to inflict the biggest-ever cuts in NHS spending.
Last year's cutbacks, imposed in a desperate effort to balance the books, are already taking a terrible toll. Waiting lists have soared for two successive quarters to an all-time high of 1.1 million while health authorities have been slashing contracts for elective (waiting list) treatment, and for out-patient appointments.
Hundreds of frontline acute hospital beds have been "temporarily" or permanently closed by cash-strapped trusts, creating conditions for a winter of chaos in Accident and Emergency units, with patients routinely waiting hours or even days on end on trolleys for lack of beds for emergency admissions.
Mental health services are under the cosh: in the second week of June there was not a single acute psychiatric bed available in London, leaving some trusts no choice but to spend vital cash sending patients to private beds, often miles away. Others struggle on under impossible conditions: one north London unit reported 40 patients on a 22-bed psychiatric ward. Care of the elderly is also in chaos, with cuts in the NHS and social services combining to leave growing numbers of frail elderly patients stranded as "bed blockers" in acute hospital beds.
But why should any of this come as a shock to Dobson and his ministers? Of course, the public picture was distorted by the evasions and downright lies of the NHS quangos, the health authorities and trusts which attempted to minimise the scale of the problem in the run-up to the election. This type of deception was utterly predictable from bodies composed of stooges selected for their willingness to do the Tory Party's bidding.
It was equally predictable that these same quangos would change tack immediately after a change of government, breaking their silence to unveil the massive crisis they had been concealing, and piling pressure on the new administration in a way they would never have attempted under their Tory masters.
True to form, trusts and health authorities have been "coming out" with horrendous multi-million deficits. Others have forged relentlessly ahead with closures of beds, services and whole hospitals, making a nonsense of Labour's promise of a "moratorium" on closures in London. By contrast, Labour's promised measures to save the NHS have evaporated. The Queen's Speech contains nothing to implement the pledge to sweep away GP fundholding and the internal market, even while figures show West Midlands GP fundholding practices have pocketed over £330m in surpluses, and managers admit that the market system is a shambolic failure.
The Royal Commission on care of the elderly, which Labour promised would be set up within days of the election, has not been heard of since 1st May. The promised year-long review of London's crisis-ridden health services has been scaled down to just four months, and with it the promised 12 month moratorium of hospital closures in London. Among the controversial closures proposed by the Tories, several are excluded from the review - notably Guys Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in Hackney - and now seem doomed to closure.
Instead the whole focus has shifted to the NHS spending review, which we have been arrogantly told is "no holds barred", with a brief to dream up new unthinkable ideas and unspeakable solutions.
This is the review which has thrown up the old chestnut of imposing new charges on patients for seeing a GP, for food and accommodation in hospital, or for prescriptions for "wealthy" pensioners. Dobson has belatedly insisted that there is no plan to impose such charges.
All these ideas have of course been previously considered by the Tories and rejected, for the simple reason that they generate relatively little cash for the huge backlash of political opposition they would generate. Most users of the NHS are elderly, or people on low incomes, who cannot be forced to pay substantial charges. Offering them exemptions, together with the cost of administering the system, would mean the charges on those who do have to pay would be prohibitive, creating massive anger and resistance.
The plain truth is that the Tory cash limits for the NHS are unsustainable. If Labour is not to celebrate the NHS's 50th anniversary by delivering the most deadly package of cuts, Gordon Brown must be told to pump in more money.