Dental: Public fees 50% more than private clinics?

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Dental: Public fees 50% more than private clinics?

June 1st, 2014 | Author: Contributions




Ganesh Mohan Das, 5, has his teeth checked by the
dentist. More than half of all children in Singapore have one or more rotten
teeth by the time they start primary school. -- ST PHOTO: ONG WEE JIN


We refer to the article “One in two Singapore kids has rotten teeth:
Report” (Straits Times, May 15).

More than half and more children with rotten teeth?

It states that “More than half of all children in Singapore have one or
more rotten teeth by the time they start primary school.

A report on the oral health of schoolchildren found that the proportion
of children with dental caries at the age of seven had gone up from 47.6 per
cent in 2003, to 50.6 per cent last year.”

Public fees much higher than private clinics?

According to the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) web site’s Average Fee for Dental
Procedures - 7 out of the 8 dental procedures listed show that the fees at
public institutions are substantially higher than private dental clinics.

For example, for
Crowns (capping) – single unit

• Public Institutions : $605 –
  $765
  Private Dental Clinics : $400 –
  $1,605

For Full Dentures – Per Arch

• Public Institutions : $521 –
  $732
  Private Dental Clinics : $250 –
  $1,500

How is it possible that the cost of dental treatment at a public dental
institution is more than 50% of that charged by private dental clinics?

Are there any countries that have these strange phenomena?

Public subsidised dental services is a joke in
Singapore?

Ask any dental professional in Singapore, and you may discover that public
“subsidised” dental treatment is
a “challenge” for the
lower-income, because the public dental polyclinics generally do not accept
walk-ins, except in ”emergency”
cases.

Appointments for “subsidised”
dental treatment can be months if not years.

Walk-ins to the National Dental Centre are as I was told – charged
non-subsidised rates.

Let the numbers do the talking?

With only 944,000 Attendances at Public Sector Dental
Clinics in 2013 – against a population of about 5.4 million – you
may get some indication of how “unaffordable” dental treatment is,
particularly for the lower-income.



SY Lee and Leong Sze Hian


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