Daves2017 wrote on May 20
th, 2024 at 9:38am:
If you have a health care card dental care is available for free in nsw and Qld ( don’t know about the other states and territories?).
So basically the idea put forward would achieve nothing other than reducing the amount already available for people doing it tough, increase taxes, and be subject to rorts by dentists who will be delighted to buy another 3 holiday day houses!)
If you want to actually do something worthwhile that worked in the past and is extremely cheap to run, reintroduce dental education in primary school.
This was removed by liberal nsw government and labor Qld government.
A classic stupid decision.
Just as putting dental into Medicare is equally as stupid.
Ffs, you know?
Just brush your teeth properly if you know how!!
I agree regarding Medicare covering dental. It would cost a fortune and there would have to be limits because so much of dental work these days is cosmetic. I can't see it happening though because doctors are abandoning Medicare and dentists would be much the same.
Maybe the govt could make a co payment towards dental costs for pensioners. Free dental is just that - you get what you pay for and if you're not paying you don't get anything in return. I think for older people they have a fill or pull attitude to dentistry because they're not going to spend time and money on the elderly.
But they definitely should be spending more on preventative dentistry for younger kids. A school dental health service should be compulsory.
However I wouldn't be too harsh about baby boomers and their teeth - they didn't always have the benefits of fluorided water. They never had dental floss until much later in their lives. They didn't have access as young children to preventative dentistry. Most people smoked back then and their diets were full of carbonated drinks and carbohydrates. Hopefully most people know better now. Unfortunately many are now suffering from decreased saliva caused by medications and chronic health conditions. Teeth like bones become more brittle. If these people need treatment and cannot afford it, they will have to go on a waiting list and they will find that there are only two treatments - either fill or pull.
But it's always been thus - back in the 70s I worked at the Dental Hospital in Admin. At the time, the professors were waging war against the govt because funding was so inadequate that young children whose teeth and mouths were grossly malformed and their appearance so horrifying due in many cases to genetic causes that they were too afraid to go out in public, were waiting years and years to have their conditions corrected.
Nothing seems to have changed. There is never enough funding.
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