Give Medicare Teeth

Today is World Oral Health Day, a chance for the dental profession to steal the spotlight for 24 hours and shine a light on the importance of oral health. It’s an opportunity to promote the importance of good oral health, and to empower people with the knowledge, tools and confidence to secure good oral health.

I’m using World Oral Health Day to call for a seismic shift that is needed in Australia to make access to dental care more affordable by launching the Give Medicare Teeth campaign in the lead up to the federal election. It is important that we don’t let dental care continue to be the forgotten issue yet again.

Health is about more than the absence of disease, and is defined as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. We need to put the mouth back into this definition of health. Because we know that oral health is a fundamental component of health and physical and mental wellbeing. You simply can’t have good overall health if you do not have good oral health.

Only around 50% of Australians visit the dentist each year, and many people delay or avoid visiting the dentist or defer necessary or recommended dental treatment. In 2023 the Senate Select Committee into the Provision of and Access to Dental Services in Australia found that there is an urgent need to reform our dental system.

The key recommendations from the Senate Committee revolve around reforming dental funding to improve access through moves towards a universal dental health scheme by expanding Medicare to include more dental services. Models proposed included universal coverage for all patients, a targeted means-tested scheme for patients receiving various government income support payments, a scheme targeted only to patients aged 65+ years and a scheme that provided only preventive care, and options for capping the rebate over a two year period or allowing for an uncapped scheme with no rebate limits.

We know there is strong public support for this, with a recent poll from Essential Research showing 77% of people agreed that dental and oral healthcare should be included in Medicare. And that support maintained high levels regardless of voting intention – 82% f0r Labor voters, 78% for Greens, 74% for Coalition voters and 79% for independents and others. There is clearly a strong constituency for this.

It takes less than a minute to email your MP and candidates in the upcoming election to encourage them to sink their teeth into Medicare to create better health today.​

You can go to the campaign website for more information or you can find your electorate on the interactive map below and use it to send an auto-generated email to your candidates* in the upcoming election, or engage with them on social media.

Share this campaign widely amongst colleagues, patients and members of the community so that the dental voice is heard.

In this episode of the Dental As Anything podcast we explore the concept of universal health coverage and the need to reform dental funding in Australia.

In case you missed it, you can catch up with the previous episodes of the Dental As Anything podcast here and read news articles here.

* Not all candidates have been announced yet. The map will continue to be updated over time.