The NobleDentist Blog

This is an article by Carol Nader that recently appeard in The Age (Melbourne).

Fees and long public waiting lists are forcing more people to take out loans to pay for dental treatment.

Marilyn Webster, from the Good Shepherd Youth and Family Service that co-ordinates a national no-interest loan scheme for people in need, said more people were applying for loans for dental treatment.

“More people are taking out loans for dental work because of the failure of the Federal Government to adequately support the funding of public dental services,” she said.

“The group using these loans are people that are already eligible for the public system but can’t afford the private system.”

Ms Webster said public dental care had been caught in cost-shifting between the Commonwealth and states.

“The people that are suffering are the people that can’t afford to go privately for dental work,” she said.

“We think one of the reasons why they are growing is that the Howard Government cut back on public dental work and while a certain degree of that was picked up by state governments, the gap wasn’t totally filled.”

A survey of 4000 dentists by the Australian Dental Association has found wide variations in what dentists charge for the same procedure.

The survey of fees conducted last year, of which part has been released to The Age, found that the average cost of a set of dentures was $1594. But dentists charged $1100 to $2581.

The average cost of an oral examination was $50, but fees varied between $36 and $87.

State Government figures show that at March, the average waiting time in Victoria for general dental care was 23 months.

The average wait for dentures was almost 25 months. Waiting times for both have been steady since December.

The number of people on waiting lists fell between December and March — from 118,375 to 117,324 for general dental care, and from 20,500 to 20,398 for dentures.

Australian Dental Association national president John Matthews said the survey did not take into account that dentists sometimes gave some patients discounts. He said the wide variation in charges was in part due to dentists charging what they thought they were worth. Some of the variation could be due to dentists misinterpreting the question.

“There will be some people who regard themselves as the absolute best and tend to charge a higher fee,” he said. “Certainly you would want to get a second opinion if it seems outrageous.”

He said other cost considerations included the “Collins Street factor” — location — the cost of materials and staff wages.

Labor health spokeswoman Nicola Roxon said she was concerned about what some dentists were charging. “A service which should be a basic service for the community is increasingly a service that you can only access if you’re on a high income,” she said.

Labor has said it would reinstate federal funding for public dental health, and Ms Roxon indicated that it would also look at ways of helping those who were ineligible for public care but who could not afford a private dentist.

A spokeswoman for Health Minister Tony Abbott said that it was up to dentists and professional groups “to ensure costs charged are responsible and realistic”.