ALP dental subsidies ‘risk costs blowout’

Pensioners and seniors could use Labor’s proposed $1000 subsidies to jump the waiting list and go private.

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles: “We’ve had no formal negotiations for dental funding arrangements — just a unilateral offer on the eve of an election, kicking it down the road and locking in the LNP cuts for one more year.” Picture: AAP

Pensioners and seniors who ­receive dental treatment without charge in the public system could use Labor’s proposed $1000 subsidies to jump the waiting list and go private instead, prompting warnings of cost blowouts.

With Labor yet to determine what it would pay private dentists to bulk bill under a promised $2.4 billion extension of Medicare, there are questions over how the Shorten government would manage demand to benefit those most in need.

The Australian has learnt the Parliamentary Budget Office, in costing the Greens’ proposal for a much broader dental scheme, estimated patients would require an average $800 worth of treatment every two years. Labor has instead opted for a $1000, two-year cap — its PBO costing has not been released — to benefit “up to three million people”.

A Labor spokesman would not explain the difference in costings yesterday, or whether the party had an estimate of how many public patients would go private, or how many private patients would benefit from fee relief.

“Labor wants more older Australians on low incomes to be able to access the dental care they need … they will be able to do that in the private or public dental systems,” the spokesman said.

While Labor expects the $1000 subsidies to ease pressure on the public dental scheme until 2020, when it would negotiate a more substantial costly agreement with the states, the public scheme is ­already under a cloud.

The existing national partnership agreement expires on June 30. Although the Coalition government allocated $110 million in the budget for a 12-month extension — which Labor would adopt — the paperwork has yet to be ­finalised.

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles welcomed Labor’s promise of a better deal, but ­reiterated that some states had consistently opposed the commonwealth’s dental funding offer.

“We’ve had no formal negotiations for dental funding arrangements — just a unilateral offer on the eve of an election, kicking it down the road and locking in the LNP cuts for one more year,” Mr Miles said.

Australia has a mixed dental system: public clinics and hospitals do not charge eligible children and disadvantaged adults, while fees in the private sector vary significantly, subsidised by health insurance, the Child Dental Benefits Schedule or paid for outright by patients.

The Grattan Institute this year found patients contributed 58 per cent of all spending on dental care in Australia in 2016-17, “dwarfing the contributions from government and private health insurance”. That year, an estimated 2.05 million adults delayed or did not see a dentist due to cost.

At the end of September, the average wait to access services under the public dental scheme ranged from six months in the ACT to 21 months in the Northern Territory. As public waiting lists have blown out, health insurers have sought to contain costs in the private sector — even buying chains of dental clinics for their members. Three quarters of Australians aged over 65 have some insurance, and Labor’s policy would allow insurers to cover costs beyond the $1000 that has been bulk-billed.

Rachel David, head of the insurance lobby Private Healthcare Australia, warned that the $2.4bn would not provide “free dental care” as promised, because a single implant could cost five times the amount of the subsidy.

“This proposal has the potential for considerable cost blowouts year after year,” Dr David said.