On the eve of a federal election that may well deliver a parliament that takes steps to put the mouth back in the body, we have candidates making it clear that improving access to dental care is a priority. A recent opinion poll also shows strong public support for the idea, and new research shows support amongst the dental profession for action. Yet there are still some dental practitioners who are resistant to change.
There is a perception that health and politics should not mix. It’s probably something that is more prevalent in the dental profession, which is highly privatised and with very little government involvement in funding for access. Yet health is inherently political . Like any resource or commodity in our neo-liberal economic system, some social groups have more of it than others. We also know that the social and commercial determinants of health – more than just individual behaviours – are amendable to political interventions.
Public health offers a measure of society. Do our political choices create gaps in health outcomes, or narrow them? Do they leave people behind or lift up entire populations?
Michael Fitzgerald, Editor in Chief of Harvard Public Health
But perhaps most importantly, health is political because the ability to achieve optimum health is a basic human right, and if we believe that oral health is an integral part of overall health, then we have to accept that access to oral health care is also a human right.
Last week I published a new study in the Australian Dental Journal titled Australian dental practitioner attitudes to expanding Medicare to include more dental services with my colleague Professor Alexander Holden at the University of Sydney. The study showed that many dental practitioners support the idea of expanding Medicare to include more dental services, based on 4 different recommendations that came out of the Senate inquiry into dental services in 2023. The research was also featured in the media.
It’s worth noting that dental services have been included under the Medicare banner since the Enhanced Primary Dental Care Scheme in 2004, morphing to the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme in 2007 and then the Child Dental Benefits Schedule since 2014. The idea of expanding these schemes to provide essential dental care for more patient groups has been well debated for decades, yet our research has generated an online storm of protest within a small section of the dental profession who do not want government funding through Medicare to improve access to dental care.
In this episode of the Dental as Anything podcast I talk about the history of expanding Medicare to include more dental services, the broader support and advocacy for schemes such as Senior Dental Benefits Scheme and the important role of research in supporting advocacy efforts.
References:
World Dental Federation. Universal Health Coverage - Oral Health for All (Fact Sheet)
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