A proposal for the government to provide the public with a £150 voucher towards private dental care would ‘mean the end of NHS dentistry’, according to dental experts.
Think tank Policy Exchange called for the government to implement a scheme to provide UK adults with vouchers worth £150 per year to be spent on dental care or insurance. It said: ‘Attempts at reform have too often resembled the slow pain of pulling teeth – it is time for radical, corrective surgery on the NHS dental system.’
In a foreword to the Policy Exchange report, former health secretary Sajid Javid said: ‘A voucher that people could use to pay for dental insurance or a capitation plan could fully cover a basic plan, or act as a co-payment towards a more extensive plan for others.
‘Such a system would empower patients, drive up standards through genuine competition, and finally break the deadlock of the current contract. It is a reform that aligns perfectly with a vision of a modern, responsive health service – one that prevents agony rather than just treating it, and one that serves the patient, not bureaucracy.’
The report suggests that the scheme would make it more economically sustainable for dentists to provide care, and incentivise them to compete on price and quality to attract patients.
‘Calls for a voucher system in NHS dentistry come with the sound of barrels being scraped’
However, the British Dental Association (BDA) said that putting the proposal into action would require the government to more than triple the dental budget. It therefore warned that it would be an ‘extremely inefficient way of improving access’.
As the vouchers would only be valid in private practices, the BDA said £150 would not even cover 10% of a set of dentures. It concluded that the scheme ‘would likely leave the most vulnerable unable to afford care, whilst subsidising those already paying for private dentistry’.
BDA chair Eddie Crouch said: ‘Calls for a voucher system in NHS dentistry come with the sound of barrels being scraped. NHS desperately needs investment, but this policy would not end dental deserts. It could easily mean spending more money on less access.
‘A struggling service urgently requires real reform and sustainable funding. We don’t need distractions, or detours into ideological comfort zones.’
Are there ‘hidden costs’ to private dentistry?
This comes as chancellor Rachel Reeves has ordered a market study into private dentistry. The minister wrote to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), urging it to investigate the costs and practices of the private dental sector.
In a statement, Reeves said ‘hidden costs, lack of transparency and overtreatment’ had impacted families in need of dental treatment.
Simon Thackeray, of the British Association of Private Dentistry (BAPD), saidd: ‘The proposal for the CMA to investigate private dentistry fees is deeply misguided.
‘Private dentistry has not caused the access crisis, inflationary pressure or workforce shortages. The root cause is decades of political neglect of NHS dentistry.’
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