AIBU to think children should get free dental treatment

That's including check up, x rays, all extractions, any fillings etc , When it costs at least £140 an hour to run a room in a cheap area and assuming the child needs at least two visits for extractions do you think that will even cover costs? The government gives no other money to cover all the costs of running a surgery other than what is earned on treatment.
Even just the software licence to send reminders out costs £800 a month or 11 courses of treatment including extractions. Now imagine all the expenses involved in running a practice and you will see why most courses of NHS treatment lose money.

I know two colleagues who in the last months handed their NHS contracts back. They had lost 6 figures the previous year providing NHS treatments.

Actually you are quoting from a study published in 2011! The percentage is falling and has fallen since then and is around 16% now.

The truth is a practice loses money on almost every NHS procedure it does. In the past private work subsidised NHS but now more and more businesses would go bust if they did NHS work.

The average dental student is now qualifying with £80,000 to £100,000 debt , student loans, loans ,indemnity , registration etc take over 50% of their earnings . Affording a car , rent etc becomes increasingly difficult . The NHS is propped up by dentists in their 50s and 60s who are now retiring and selling up but the next generation can't afford business loans and mortgages on NHS payments.

In a cheap area it costs £140 an hour per room to run a surgery and the only money the practice gets for all expenses is what the patient pays plus a few pennies or a couple of pounds from the government. It just doesn't cover costs. https://www.bda.org/media-centre/nhs-dentistry-treasury-now-no1-roadblock-to-saving-service/

Wrong. Orthodontists qualify as dentists and then do further training to become orthodontists. Just like GPs start off receiving the same training as all doctors. Therefore orthodontists are just as qualified to take teeth out, and in fact many dentists believe they should, to minimise errors in the referral process

Exactly. The state of dentistry in the UK is an absolute scandal. Teeth are part of the human body, and as such should be treated like any other part of the body when there is a medical issue with them - by the NHS, via taxation.

If there's something wrong with your heart, or your legs, or your stomach etc, you go to the doctor and get treated without worrying about money. For purely cosmetic issues you go private, as is fair. The same should be true for your mouth and teeth.

Teeth are not some separate zone - dental disease causes huge suffering and can also cause problems in other parts of the body.

Having just laid out 3.5k to my dentist this is horrific. I’m lucky my 4 all adults now went to a nhs dentist. I had no idea children had to pay there’s no way half the parents would have the cash spare

@PoshDuckQuarkQuark Tbf, it’s not unusual in dentistry and medicine. Several countries require an aptitude test/entrance exam to take these degrees, because they’re such competitive fields. Even without coaching, applicants can study online and take practice tests- you definitely need to do this tbh.

Some countries also require such tests for law degrees and certain business degrees.

I agree that children should get free dental care. I also think that all adults should get free/NHS dental care.

But no you can’t expect dentists (or anyone) to work for free no matter for who. If they are private how can they recoup the cost of seeing all these children? They can’t. They would be working totally for free. That’s obviously not sustainable. Especially because you’ll then get people saying well they should also treat pregnant women for free. Then people on benefits/low income etc. Suddenly only about a tenth of the patients are paying.

Im a hygienist. We once had a woman come in to our fully private practice and had a check up first then a cleaning with me. Check up was £50 and seeing me was £45. Which took an hour of surgery time total. When she was leaving reception told her how much she owed and she said no I’m pregnant you can claim it back from the NHS and she walked out. But it doesn’t work like that obviously. You don’t just contact “the NHS” and they give you money. So both me and the dentist worked for free for half an hour each that day. I already don’t earn anything if a patient cancels or doesn’t show up. Now according to her I should not get paid even when I’m actually working just because she’s pregnant. And people seem to think dentists should work for free just because they see children. It’s ridiculous. The government should sort out NHS dentistry yes absolutely. But no it’s not dentists responsibility to see kids for free no matter what.

Jesus. I remember being able to find a dentist easily!

We still have the same dentist which we have used since I was a child, in the same village and thankfully they still do NHS. I couldn’t afford private

Well both these students got 3A*s and a B at A Level and are absolutely intelligent but their scores were not good enough as they didnt know what the answers were looking for. If they'd had coaching they would have known.

The dentistry course is massively skewed for private school pupils.

I think about a quarter of dentistry students are private school pupils which is far higher than the percentage thay attend private schools.

There was a study done a while ago into the entries to medicine and dentistry. Dentistry in particular was interesting as in the 80s it was male dominated (95%) and now 60% of places are female! It also has an ethnicity skew too.

The NHS not paying enough is a different story, but theyre not giving state school working class kids a chance.

And no, private practices should not have to provide free dental care to children. You do not expect any other private business to provide free services to large swathes of the population.

Should the government fund enough NHS care to cover free dental care for all children? Yes. But if a private practice does not have an NHS contract then you can't expect them to provide work for free. That like walking into a private hosptial and expecting them to provide you with free care because you are entitled to it on the NHS.

You really don't need coaching to pass the UKCAT if you are reasonably intelligent. It's an entry exam required for most medical and dental schools

NHS dentistry does not pay. It doesn't cover the cost of running the practice anymore. The reason practices are dropping their NHS contracts is because the rate at which you have to work to provide NHS care and function as a practice is too high and does not provide a decent standard of care to patients.

In theory, yes, but as @MigGril says, dentists don't get enough money back from the government for doing NHS care so as a business can't afford to do it anymore.

To provide free dentistry for all children, presumably tax money needs to be directed from other areas into dentistry and/or taxes need to be increased. As others have said, oral health is extremely important.

That's shocking.

I did not know this, thank you.

There's another good reason NHS dentists go private - a huge percentage of those who study dentistry are private school pupils who have no intention of staying in the NHS.

I teach in a state school and I had 2 pupils who really wanted to do dentistry at university, but to even get an interview you need to do an entry aptitude exam. We then discovered to ace these you need coaching - money which neither the school nor these pupils had. Both these pupils got A grades at A Level and would have been exactly the sort of person who would have stayed with the NHS.

The whole dentistry industry needs overhauling to remove the elite entry it currently has.

YANBU.

Dentistry in this country is a joke. Our family's NHS dentist is 200 miles away. It was the closest we could get. So many around us are forced into unaffordable private dentist places; or if they're lucky, local clinics for children until they're 16 or so. Crazy.

The dentistry issue in this country is a real problem. Cant blame dentists for going private when they do such a skilled and difficult job that takes years of training but if they stay on the NHS, they will be paid peanuts.

I do agree with you, but getting NHS dentists is nigh on impossible in my area. I did my degree in Wales and got a dentist in my university town easily. When I moved back to the North of England, I tried for around 2 years before I managed to find an NHS dentist!
They were OK but not great and it was a revolving door of dentists which isn't great when you're nervous.

We are with a private dentist now. I pay for a plan (most do) £16 a month covers me and my 11 year old for routine check ups, hygienist and x-rays.

If you need work doing, you do pay, but he charges similar to NHS.

I have just had quite a complicated filling on a tooth I broke years ago (previous NHS dentists didn't do a great job of fixing it!). He had to drill it out, drill some tooth, seal the nerve, fill and re-build the tooth. Charged me £130 which I felt was quite reasonable for what he did.

I do feel for people who cannot afford to pay privately though and many can't 😔

I agree, but I think it should be free for adults too.

Yes I agree with you. Hope things go well with getting a dentist. I'm sorry you are having to deal with this. You sound like a great mum.

My daughter has just had her braces off, her dentist said she would definitely need teeth removed but the (NHS) orthodontist said he'd only needed teeth removed for braces twice in 20 years and it was outdated.

Could you try some dentists further away? I think we have some arrangement in our area where you can register with an NHS dentist in the next county.

I was in the same boat and eventually managed to find an NHS dentist to take DS on 90 mins away, but by the time I worked out how much it would cost me to take the days off to take him it worked out cheaper to just pay in the end.

I emailed my MP five times about the issue and never even got a response so they don't give a shit either. Whole situation is a disgrace.

I'm surprised by this. Back in my extremely long-ago childhood, when OF COURSE dental treatment was free, I had 5 teeth removed due to overcrowding but braces would've had to be paid for. Perhaps they'd have been covered as an alternative to extractions? I don't know.

I came to like my crooked dentition, but had no choice really.

It depends, I had a sibling who had braces and other treatments that were a medical requirement, not just cosmetic. Overlapping teeth or under/overbites aren’t just about looks, they can have a medical effect if left untreated.

All dentistry (medical) should be free. Oral health is the gateway to other health. We know this. Our mouths have important good bacteria and without it our health can plummet - poor oral hygiene is linked to heart conditions and more.

Dentistry needs a shake up ASAP. The whole system is ridiculous.