New reports confirm regional Australia can’t afford abolition of Coalition’s Medicare Dental Scheme

Two new reports should force the Rudd Government to abandon its attempts to abolish the Coalition’s Medicare Dental Scheme, which offers eligible people up to $4250 over two years for dental work, according to Nationals Senator Fiona Nash. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s 17 February report, Geographic variation in oral health and use of dental services in the Australian population 2004-06, confirms regional Australians are at a major disadvantage when it comes to oral health, noting “tooth loss, poorer oral health and unfavourable dental visiting patterns were all more prevalent among those living outside the capital cities” source: http://www.aihw.gov.au/mediacentre/2009/mr20090217.cfm The Rudd Government’s own National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission has just recommended the creation of a $5 billion ‘Denticare’ scheme. “That proposal,” says Senator Nash, “is both unaffordable and impractical according to the Australian Dental Association.” “However it does show the folly of Labor’s attempts to abolish the Medicare Dental Scheme - attempts which the Coalition and others have so far been able to thwart in the Senate.” “The Coalition’s Medicare Dental Scheme funded more than a million dental treatments in NSW alone in 2008.” source: www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/statistics/dyn_mbs/forms/mbsgtab4.shtml “This included many pensioners in country areas accessing comprehensive dental care for the first time.” “Labor wants to replace the Scheme with a flawed Commonwealth Dental Health Program which hands more money to the states to treat patients under the public system, but as the AIHW report confirms, these services are rarely available in regional areas,” Senator Nash said. “At the time Labor said it could not fund both services and maintain the budget surplus, but recent developments have demolished that argument,” Senator Nash concluded.

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