DENTAL Medicare - the scheme the Rudd Government wants to axe - is helping many more disadvantaged and stricken patients than the better off, says a Sydney doctor, Allan Passmore.
Contrary to the Government's claim that dental Medicare is more likely to benefit the well-off, Dr Passmore has found the opposite.
In just six months at a western suburbs medical practice, Dr Passmore says he has referred more than 150 patients to private dentists for major treatment under Medicare that they could not otherwise afford.
But in Turramurra, where he also practises, he has encountered not one patient with the dental problems justifying referral under the scheme.
Dr Passmore has been able to make direct comparisons because, unusually, he works at practices in the two contrasting areas. Turramurra is in the Liberal stronghold of Bradfield where median incomes are double those in the staunch Labor seat of Reid where Dr Passmore also works 1½ days a week at a Granville practice.
He says the patients in Granville have been ecstatic at getting treatment for dental and gum problems that leave them in chronic pain, unable to chew and even smile because of embarrassment over their absent or rotting teeth.
Dr Passmore has launched a one-man letter campaign aimed at persuading senators against allowing the Government to scrap the scheme and replacing it with a broader-based scheme largely reliant on student-staffed public dental clinics.
To qualify for major dentistry, including dentures totalling up to $4250, patients must have a chronic illness as well as dental problems affecting, or likely to affect, their general health.
The reason that people in Turramurra were less likely to be eligible for the scheme was because "they are well able to afford proper dental care … and so they do not have any significant dental problems affecting their underlying illness", Dr Passmore has said in a letter to the Greens leader, Bob Brown.
Dr Passmore says the NSW public dental service is not equipped to provide the necessary services, partly because of the reluctance of most dentists to work in public services and the dependence on students whose work was often "very poor", with many patients suffering unresolved problems.
One such patient is Paul Brown, who told the Herald that after having lost his upper front teeth because of a medical condition, he was prescribed an ill-fitting denture at the Westmead public clinic.
After five years of "hiding at home" because of embarrassment, Mr Brown said the results of the private treatment he was now receiving had "changed my whole outlook on life".
A spokesman for the Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, said the replacement scheme would enable people to have serious conditions addressed under revived federal funding of $780 million over four years compared with $50 million in the past four years.