Well, the exact estimated figure is $11.6 billion per year, according to a new parliamentary report, which was driven by the Greens. This is the assessed price of granting universal access to free dental care. Nearly $12 billion annual cost for free dental for all Australians: Would it be worth it? Hell yes? I hear loudly declaimed by many around me, when I mention this at a picnic lunch gathering. It has always seemed strange to me and many I know that dental care was ostracised from the rest of the body when it came to Medicare. Our teeth and gums must feel like excluded outsiders, when they actually repose in an in-between region of the body. Our smile or grimace can be pushed out beyond our lips in part if one really makes an effort.

Free Dental For All Australians, Would You Pay The Billions Each Year?

In contradiction of making an effort on this score Australian governments have consistently seen fit not to extend the universal healthcare insurance fund to include the dental realm. These homegrown, innate tools for eating food are on their own when it comes to who will pay for their fixing and replacing. Only ourselves are deemed financially responsible for their maintenance and care. The lucky country is not so lucky when it comes to tooth aches, fillings, and crowns, it seems.

Paying For Dental Care With Our Own Billions

In many ways, we are lucky because of the fine ranks of dentists servicing our oral health needs. We have some of the best dental care in the world; it is just that we have to pay for it ourselves. Many in the dental profession would remark it is precisely for this reason that the standards of dentistry in Australia are so high. ‘You get what you pay for in life,’ is something my dear old dad was oft prone to say. Fierce neoliberals might add that it is a fundamental belief of theirs that ‘the user should pay for everything.’ Out with this welfare system, as it only breeds weakness and dependency. Upright citizens should work hard and be paid for their labour, from which they can afford to purchase what they require in life.

Take A Look At Medicare

Medicare is very popular in Australia, just ask the Coalition LNP, as they tried for decades to eradicate it unsuccessfully. Medicare is not perfect, of course, few government schemes of this size and age are. Doctors are mixed in their feelings toward this universal free medical care scheme.

“It was the first scheme where the Federal Government collected taxation to pay out as medical service rebates.
Prior to this, it was not uncommon for Australians to go bankrupt when in dire medical straits – with a scattered private health system and no safety net for those who could not afford it.
By the time Medicare began, more than 14 million Australians, around 92% of the population, had signed up.
Since then, Medicare has paid over $488 billion in benefits and in its first financial year, it cut the cost of healthcare so dramatically that inflation fell from 6.5% to 3.9%.”
– RACGP.org.au

Medicare needs further renovation after 40 something years, as most edifices would, especially one so well used by the entire population of a country. Medicare is a price setting scheme along with many other things and would be anti-inflationary, as suggested by the above quote. Perhaps, the dental profession and sector could do with some of this for the benefit of consumers and the Australian economy. Sticky inflation in the service sector has been identified by the Reserve Bank of Australia – dentists and their increased rates have been included in this finger pointing by the Governor of the RBA, Michele Bullock.

The federal government estimates it will spend close to $32 billion on Medicare in 2024-25. It is interesting to ponder that free dental would increase this by a further $11.6 billion annually. Oral health, for such a relatively small region of the body, charges an expensive share in potentially forming around a quarter of all universal healthcare expenses of Australians. Perhaps, we would see a reduction in costs if a price setting element was introduced to the dental market via universal free dental care?

Many dentists would be dead against this on the basis of the damage it would potentially do to their business models and ability to generate lucratively profitable incomes going forward. It may reduce the risks involved in operating a dental practice but it would also limit the profitability of the venture. Socialised healthcare and medicine butts heads with the private sector and its concerns with the free market economy and deregulation for greater profitability.

The ADA Does Not Support Free Universal Dental Care

“The ADA did not support a universal scheme. It advocated for policies aimed at ensuring all individuals have ‘equitable and unrestricted access to necessary dental services, regardless of factors including socioeconomic status, geographic location, or other personal characteristics’. The ADA said universal coverage schemes, like the National Health Service in the United Kingdom (UK), are not the best way to achieve equity of access:
Internationally, comprehensive oral health care and satisfactory oral health outcomes have been difficult to achieve with universal dental schemes. In particular, the national health services in the UK and Germany have resulted in oral health outcomes worse than those of Australia. All countries, including those with universal dental schemes, exhibit disparities in oral health. We therefore do not consider a universal dental scheme a practical solution to improving oral health outcomes for Australians. Instead, we recommend targeted schemes, subsidised by public funding.”
– APH.gov.au 

The UK faces the current situation, where a decade or more of Conservative governments have seen the NHS largely neglected and underfunded. The effect of this has been to render it unable to fulfil its remit in providing many of the healthcare services at a standard expected and for which it has been set up to fulfil historically. The undermining of public services and the sale of public assets has been an ongoing trend over the last 30 years around the Western world. Few observers would rate the predominantly privatised health system in the United States as preferable to that of the healthcare system in Australia, unless you are a select member of the very wealthy in either country.

Budgetary Spends Of Tax Payer Money

Is it too much? A $12 billion annual cost for free dental care for all Australians might just be worth it. The answer to this question would be determined from the perspective of where you sit in relation to your level of wealth, state of your teeth, vocational position or profession, and, perhaps, political view about such things. Australia is going to spend around $368 billion over 30 years on nuclear submarines, that we may not end up getting. Everything is relative, apparently; and government budgetary spends are all about what is considered worth investing in to various sections of the population. The military and Royal Australian Navy in particular, reckon submarines are worth this enormous amount of money to bolster our national security. It has been reported that up to half the population of Australia do not get the dental care they need, largely because they consider it too expensive and beyond their means. We have been living with this reality for a very long time.

“The latest data also shows 30 per cent of Australians who needed to see a dentist delayed or avoided seeing one in the previous 12 months, and around one in five reported that cost was a reason for doing so.
Other research from the Australian Dental Association (ADA) suggests as many as two-thirds of Australians avoid or delay dental care due to cost.”
– Olivia Willis, ABC Health News, Oct 2024

It’s currently a utopian dream – free dental care for all Australians. There’s no denying that oral health care is an expensive business. We have to ask ourselves, as a nation, does every woman, man and child deserve to get top notch dental care? Who should pay for it? If it is so expensive how will the growing working poor pay for their visits to the dentist? A few of us are already accessing our superannuation to pay for restorative work on our teeth. Dentistry is only going to keep on getting more expensive. Something to think about folks, anyway.

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