Prime Minister Attlee's initial reaction to the draft budget was that there were not likely to be many votes in it – Gaitskell replied that he could not expect votes in a rearmament year. Ernest Bevin did not like the idea of health charges and tried in vain to negotiate a compromise. Education Minister George Tomlinson suggested a repetition of the previous year's formula, a spending ceiling of £400m. Gaitskell was prepared to offer a delay in the introduction of charges but rejected the Tomlinson formula, despite Attlee's urgings, as the ceiling could not be achieved without charges. Attlee went into hospital to be treated for a duodenal ulcer on 21 March. From his sickbed he wrote what Kenneth O. Morgan calls a "remarkably vacuous letter" which "dealt with none of the substantive points at issue". At a Cabinet meeting on 22 March Gaitskell was dissuaded from his original intention to insist on prescription charges, as these might fall heavily on the genuinely sick.