Are your kids among the 2 million missing out on $1000 of Medicare funded dental care

TWO million kids are entitled to $1000 of Medicare-funded dental care — but their parents don’t know about it and the govt is keeping it quiet.

Two million kids fail to claim $1000 worth of free dental care. Picture: iStock

EXCLUSIVE

TWO million children are missing out on $1000 worth of free dental care because the government refused to advertise Medicare’s new Child Dental rebates and tried to axe them.

This is even though seven in 10 kids aged under nine have dental decay and 30,000 children a year are hospitalised for dental treatment under general anaesthetic.

Smarting from almost losing an election over its attacks on Medicare new Health Minister Greg Hunt has changed tack to embrace the Child Dental Benefits Scheme and says he will write to every family to tell them about it.

“As a brand new Minister and as a father, this is something that I not only wanted to do, but I deliberately signed into law,” he told News Corp.

“We’ll be writing to all of the families involved. Each family of the more than three million children who qualify will directly receive notification, not just of the increase, but of the system,” he said.

The Child Dental Benefits Scheme that provides $1000 worth of Medicare-funded dental care every two years for kids eligible for Family Tax Benefit A is Australia’s best kept secret.

The Turnbull Government unsuccessfully tried to shut down the scheme to save money, then tried to cut the money available to $700 and has failed to make parents aware of the new entitlement that began in 2014.

As a result just a third of the 2.9 million children eligible for the rebates have used them and in the meantime the decay in the mouths of the nation’s children is worsening.

Reviews have urged the Government to promote the dental scheme to parents. Picture Istock

Two government inquiries have lashed the Health Department for failing to properly promote the scheme.

The scheme began in 2014 but there has never been a television or radio advertising program to promote it.

And the Health Department website has been wrongly informing parents the scheme was due to close even though Parliament rejected plans to wrap it up.

Parents are only informed about eligibility once a year in January in a general mailout.

And a government review headed by the Chief Medical Officer found this letter was so obscurely worded parents would be unable to understand that it gave them an entitlement to free dental care from their family dentist.

“The CDBS has been poorly promoted, and noted that the current eligibility notification did not provide readily recognisable advice of an entitlement,” the review said.

It said that professional advice should be sought to overhaul the promotion of the program and the notification letter “should be made attractive and recognisable as a ‘voucher’ for services”.

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More than 30,000 children are hospitalised for dental care each year Picture: iStock

A separate review by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) also called for the program to be better promoted.

The ANAO found the program had received only 10 mentions on social media and that only 104,000 customers had visited the CBDS website.

Australian Dental Association president Dr Hugo Sachs is urging the government to advertise the scheme to cut the number of children hospitalised for dental care and prevent the huge number of cavities.

“If you don’t advertise something the uptake will be poor,” Dr Sachs says.

“We have tens of thousands of preventable hospital admissions for dental disease when there is funding for kids to get preventive treatment,” he said.

Under the program children aged 2-17 whose families qualify for Family Tax Benefit A are eligible for $1,000 in benefits for basic dental services including check ups, X-rays, fillings, extractions and root canals (braces are not covered).

They can go to their regular family dentist to receive the care and Medicare will provide a rebate, 97 per cent of services supplied under the scheme are bulk billed.

The amount of benefits available is capped at $1000 per patient every two calendar years.

Parliament refused to abolish the child dental scheme. Picture Supplied

Former Health Minister Sussan Ley tried to axe the scheme in the 2016 budget and replace it with a new scheme that had 30 per cent less funding even though it covered 7 million more people.

Her office promised the new scheme would cover the cost of teenage braces.

The Australian Dental Association opposed the plan because it was not means tested, it would have provided just $42 of dental care for each eligible person per year.

Ms Ley was forced to abandon her scheme last year after states refused to take part and Parliament refused to agree to legislation to end the Child Dental Benefits Scheme.

The government late last year announced a plan to slash the dental benefits available to children from $1000 to $700.

This was abandoned by new Health Minister Greg Hunt last week after the Senate signalled its intention to block the change.

Opposition health spokeswoman Catherine King said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull “should be embarrassed at his attempts to abolish and cut a scheme to protect children’s teeth. Labor established this scheme to ensure Australian children have access to basic dental, and we have fought to protect it every step of the way.

“The Government’s failure to promote it is a complete joke — now that they have been forced into an embarrassing backflip, I encourage eligible families to take up the scheme and ensure our next generation has the best oral health possible,” she said.

Originally published as Are your kids among the 2 million missing out on $1000 of Medicare funded dental care