Dental care breakthrough negotiated by the Greens

There's been a great breakthrough today in the Greens' campaign to get dental care properly funded and included in Medicare. Greens Senator Dr Richard di Natale announced successful negotiations with the Government to get half a billion dollars worth of dental care improvements included in Tuesday's Budget:

• $345.9 million for a public dental waiting list blitz, to help the 400,000 Australians on public waiting lists get treatment faster
• the Chronic Dental Disease Scheme will be saved from Budget cuts, until we can develop a comprehensive national scheme with the Government to replace it
• $158.6 million to train more dentists and oral health therapists, and help dental professionals set up practices in rural areas
• $10.5 million to promote good oral health.

But di Natale has said this is just the start:

We're going to take the next steps on that road straightaway. Starting this week, and continuing in coming months, we will negotiate with the Government to design a scheme to help Australians access the dental care they need. We're all going to need to keep the campaign going to get the best outcome from those negotiations: bringing dental care into Medicare at last. Later this year, we will bring the results of our negotiations to the Parliament and establish a national dental scheme. I look forward to voting for that reform, which will be a direct result of your passionate support.

I’ve helped on Greens’ stalls collecting petition signatures supporting this initiative and can say that almost everyone I spoke with signed up. It has almost universal support. And to everyone who put their names to the Greens petition - thank you - you helped bring this outcome to fruition.

People will say we can’t afford it when the government is trying to return the budget to surplus. But the reality is that it would be an investment rather than an expense. Implementing this via this year’s budget would have negligible cost impact this year and for their beloved surplus.

This important for the ACT. This investment in preventative medicine will - in time - reduce the kinds of downstream health problems that result from poor dental health, as this article on The Conversation shows. And that will in turn reduce demand on our ACT health care system and tax base.