Gems

Just saw the following on the news.
Seams Rudd wants to bring in medicare style dental treatment for everyone. However a catch we have to pay increase on medicare levy.

"(Denticare) would give every Australian universal access to preventative and restorative dental care and dentures, regardless of a person's ability to pay," Dr Bennett said.


The existing Medicare and Pharmaceutical Benefits schemes would be maintained, but the Medicare levy increased by 0.75per cent to 2.25 per cent to extend universal coverage of health services to dental care.

However the dentists are not too happy and do not want it! I wonder why $$$$$


What do you think? I personally think dental is expensive here. I have four kids so for me I like the sounds of denticare. Id be happy to pay extra if we got bulkbilled dental.

Gems

ABCDiamond

It's only a proposal to the government so far.

But, who knows, it may happen. It would be good, in fact very good, if it cost us less.

If they charged an extra 1% on medicare, it would cost the average wage earner $615 per year.

We spent on Dentists, an average of $1,275 per year for the last 3 years.
That's $425 per year for each of us.

If we were average, then an extra 2% levy would be needed to cover the cost.

Gems

Yes, will be debated for a couple of more months.
Not convinced it will go through. But would be interesting if it did.

Gems

jad n rich

Thats not the only proposal.

One of the other options is to make the premium 14% of your taxable income

So a family on $100,000 for eg would be paying $14,000 medicare levy. That is ON TOP of income tax.

Mr Rudd is doing very little to encourage the hard working/well educated to stay in this country.

Gems

They never mentioned that bit! 14%

Notts_bloke

So the top rate of tax would be 55%!? Good bye Oz hello New Zealand.

ABCDiamond

How much do NZ charge ?

Notts_bloke

Sorry, I don't know. I was just being flippant about not wanting to pay 55% tax!

DunRoaminTheUK

Mr Rudd can kiss my arse if he thinks that I am going to pay somewhere slightly over $14,000 for my dental cover.

Notts_bloke

You could have a set of gold teeth for that.

Also why is it called Denticare? why not just Dentalcare? Where has the 'i' come from?

jad n rich

Australia is always 'amazed' that it has a brain drain, highly skilled/educated australians prefer to live overseas.

This has to be one of the best plans to get rid of another million of them.

I cant wait till Mr Rudd also announces how the taxpayer will also pay for the 42 billion debt hes rung up in one year. Plus he gave away the 22 billion that was already there.

jayr

Where did you find the 14%? I'd be very suprised if that were realistic. On a rough estimate of 10m workers on $50k pa that would raise $70 billion or more than 3 times defence expenditure

jad n rich

Business channel last night. But I had already read about it too. It was not only 'mentioned' it was discussed in some length, the idea being those who can afford it should pay for those that cant

Edit, one google attack later, was indeed reported yesterday too. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...14-601,00.html

hoofie2002

Great - so for the crime of working hard and being well-paid I'll have to pony up more money on Medicare WHILST still paying for my private insurance AND still paying the gap for private treatment. [A decision taken after paying out $2500 for a wisdom tooth removal that would have taken a 6 month wait otherwise].

It will go the way of NHS dentistry in the UK - no dentist will touch it because it won't pay enough compared to private. Why have a patient in the chair for $50 if you can spend the same time treating a private patient at $100 ?

Here a good idea - why doesn't the government hand out vouchers for medical/dental treatment INSTEAD of giving out billion's of dollars of taxpayer cash.

The economy might go down the toilet but at least we will all go down with a brilliant smile

jad n rich

One of the best laughs about all this is they propose to pay 85% of the schedule fee.

Ohhhh would that be like medicare, where 85% of the schedule fee is nothing like they actually charge.

Ie specialist for a child, initial consultation, $300, medicare rebate $68.

I can really see Dentists charging anything like the schedule fee, so most aussies will still be whinging they cant afford a dentist anyway.

Load of bolloc#s basically, Rudd needs to claw back all hes giving out and this is just going to be the start of it