media releases

“The Federal Government’s commitment to $500 million over 4 years for dental care is welcome but lacks any vision or strategy to achieve comprehensive universal access dental care for Australians,” said Dr Tracy Schrader, president, Doctors Reform Society.

“The plan appears to depend upon the capacity of State run public dental services to use the money despite workforce shortages,” said Dr Schrader. “Some patients will undoubtably benefit but if this is the plan for the next 4 years, many Australians will continue to be denied adequate dental care because it is too expensive.”

“Our public hospitals are struggling with huge waiting lists because there are no empty beds but dental problems are the second commonest cause of preventable admissions to public hospitals. Failure to spend adequately on dental spreads the problems across the system,” said Dr Schrader.

“Yet the Federal Government continues to fund the dental care of the many Australians who can afford dental cover through private health insurance whilst denying similar financial support to the majority who don’t have such cover.”

“A comprehensive accessible dental care system would seem to be as far away from most Australians as it was a decade ago”.

Dr Tracy Schrader
President
Doctors Reform Society
Ph 0401042619

Dr Tim Woodruff
Vice President
Doctors Reform Society
Ph 0408892610

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