New research shows millions of Australians cannot afford basic dental care adding pressure on the Federal government to introduce dental health reform.
A Brotherhood of St Laurence report revealed 17 per cent of the poorest Australians have no natural teeth.
The findings also show poor oral health costs the national economy up to $2 billion in lost employment and accounts for 1,000,000 workdays and 600, 000 school days lost each year.
Nicola Ballenden from the Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL) says inadequate funding of public dental care bears “significant economic and social costs” for disadvantaged Australians.
“People who can’t afford to go to a private dentist are reliant on very underfunded public dental services which means they often have to wait weeks, months, sometimes even years to get treatment.
This can lead to other health problems and undermine their capacity to work, make it difficult to eat and even speak and these people have to live with a lot of pain,” she said.
The Greens party is pushing for the Gillard government to introduce a Medicare-style dental health scheme, a move that the BSL supports.
“What we’d like to see in the short term is fixing the system for disadvantaged people but in the medium term we think that it’s really important that the mouth is treated like the rest of the body and that it is part of a universal health scheme,” said Ballenden.
Past estimates of the cost have exceeded $8 billion annually but Sydney University academic, Hans Zuellner, predicts a universal dental care scheme is more likely to be around $4 billion.
“Yes it will cost but it won’t be as much as the government believes and it’s not going to be throwing money into a pit.”
“Research shows most people initially undergo a more expensive high level treatment but over time the cost goes down as they only come in for less expensive maintenance procedures,” he said.
The Australian Dental Association said they propose DentalAccess as a less expensive alternative, which targets the lowest 30 per cent of income earners.
But Associate professor Hans Zuellner, who chairs the Association for the Promotion of Oral Health, said the ADA plan would not be the best move.
“That’s going to work great for the dentists but it’s not going to work great for the nation.”
“Unless everybody’s eligible for the scheme you won’t have the benefit of wealthy people paying for the poor people and you won’t have the benefit of the whole population exerting competitive pressures on private dentists to keep their fees low,” he said.
Labor says it will unveil its dental care plans as part of next year’s budget.
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