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The Budget & Your Dental Health

The Budget & Your Dental Health

June Shannon takes a look at the implications of #Budget17 for dental patients.

On budget day earlier this month the Department of Social Protection announced that changes to the dental and optical treatment schemes would benefit 2.5 million people.

The details are still unclear as to exactly what dental treatments PRSI workers and the self-employed will be entitled to as a result of #Budget17 and any changes will have to be negotiated with dentists who provide treatment under the schemes before patients see the benefits.

The PRSI Dental Scheme was established in 1952 and under the scheme PRSI workers were entitled to a range of treatments including an annual oral exam, gum cleaning, fillings, extractions and root canal treatment. However in Budget 2010 the range of treatments available was significantly reduced with the result that PRSI workers were only entitled to on oral examination once a year.

The Irish Dental Association (IDA) has long campaigned for a restoration to the PRSI dental benefit scheme for dental health however the association gave a cautious welcome to the recent Budget announcement.

Commenting, the Chief Executive of the IDA, Mr Fintan Hourihan said dentists had been campaigning for the return of grant in aid benefits to hard-pressed workers and their families since savage unilateral cuts were made to the Dental Treatment Benefit Scheme in 2010.

However he warned that the Department of Social Protection would have to engage in talks with the IDA before any proposed changes come into force.

“Very few details are available at this stage on the precise nature of Minister Varadkar’s proposals.  Dentists are not currently contracted to treat the self-employed so this will require contract talks to take place between the Department and the IDA. Separate negotiations on the other proposed changes, so far unspecified, for currently eligible PRSI contributors will also be required.”

“Recently the IDA warned the Department of Social Protection that any changes or proposed new scheme would have to be guided by best practice. Any changes would also need to be evidence based for patients as well as being economically viable for dentists” Mr Hourihan added.

According to the Irish Dentists Association (IDA), “currently, over 2 million PRSI contributors and their dependent spouses remain eligible for the free dental examination. The Dental Treatment Benefit Scheme was availed of by 312,659 people during 2015 at a cost of €10.3 million. In 2009, the last year the scheme operated unrestricted, the cost of the scheme was €62.3 million.

It is unlikely therefore that dental patients will see any of the benefits announced in Budget 2017 until after the outcome of negotiations between the IDA and Government, which, in reality, could take some time.

Another bone of contention in #Budget17 was the introduction of a ‘sugar tax’ or tax on soft fizzy drinks, which was widely expected to be introduced but postponed in its introduction until 2018.

On the same day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a report which urged all countries to tax sugary drinks.  According to the WHO “taxing sugary drinks can lower consumption and reduce obesity, type 2 diabetes and tooth decay and improve dental health”.

WHO stated that “fiscal policies that lead to at least a 20 per cent increase in the retail price of sugary drinks would result in proportional reductions in consumption of such products”.  “Reduced consumption of sugary drinks means lower intake of “free sugars” and calories overall, improved nutrition and fewer people suffering from overweight, obesity, diabetes and tooth decay,” the WHO stated.

In its ‘Programme for Partnership Government” published earlier this year, the Government made a commitment to “make a number of key public health interventions” including the introduction of “a health levy on sugar-sweetened drinks (SSD).”

The British Dental Association (BDA)  estimated that nearly a quarter of the added sugar in our diet comes from soft drinks and children aged 11-18 get 40 per cent of their added sugars from soft drinks.

Last year the IDA revealed that 10,000 children under 15 were being hospitalised every year in Ireland for dental extractions under general anaesthetic, and the IDA estimated that these dental health figures could be up to five times higher than the UK.

“The Department of Finance’s public consultation process will now seek input from stakeholders, including SSD producers, in terms of how to impose the new tax in a way which ensures that the health objectives of the tax are met, that Revenue is enabled to collect it efficiently, fairly and effectively, and that compliance with the tax is not overly onerous on producers. The tax must also be designed so that it is compliant with EU State aid rules. Finally, the design of the tax must take into account cross-border issues, and so should complement the proposed soft drinks industry levy which is due to be imposed in the UK from April 2018.”

The public consultation process is now open and it will run until 5pm on Tuesday January 3rd 2017. Contact us today for more information.