Massive cavities, mouthfuls of broken teeth, bleeding gums and abscesses — they’re just some of the serious dental issues Dr. Melvin Lee has treated in less than two weeks of providing care under Canada’s new public dental insurance plan.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    251·
    6 months ago

    I really don’t understand why they went with a private insurance company to deliver this program … they really had to shoehorn a private company into a public service in order to make it happen. Cut out the private company and it would likely save more money in the long run … money that could be turned around to hire government staff and a new government department to run the program. Instead of having a private company partly work to deliver the program and partly work to try to turn a profit by degrading the service for their monetary benefit.

    There will always be fat to the system no matter who delivers it … the difference is that if you allow private companies into these situations, they’ll do everything in their power to deride the new system and turn into something that will only benefit them.

    • MacroCyclo@lemmy.ca
      11·
      6 months ago

      If I had to guess it was probably done due to expediency. Starting something like this from scratch is going to take a lot more time than outsourcing. This program got implemented pretty quick. I agree though, longterm it is excess.

      • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
        4·
        6 months ago

        I doubt it. The provincial governments already run massive “health insurance” programs in Canada, this would not have been an impossible task to add a small dental program that only covers a fraction of the population to that.

        Private “health insurance” cannot be cheaper than public. You have expenses which are the cost of people going to the dentist. And you have revenues, which are paid for through taxes. The only math that changes is that private insurance also adds profit for shareholders on top.

        This is purely about privatizing Canadian healthcare.

        • Mathieu@beehaw.orgEnglish
          3·
          6 months ago

          However, the Federal government has limited options when it comes to influencing the provincial health care programs. They can offer money with strings attached, and that’s about it. Given the hostile atmosphere from some provinces… they may not have been able to offer dental care by working through this traditional means.

          • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
            3·
            6 months ago

            However, the Federal government has limited options when it comes to influencing the provincial health care programs.

            Exactly. Half of the provinces (the ones with conservative governments, to the surprise of nobody) were fighting against the feds doing any sort of dental care program.

            I’m plesantly surprised they were able to get even this weak program operational.

          • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
            2·
            6 months ago

            That’s fair.

            It’s funny, conservatives seem to be able to make Canada shittier no matter what. We try to get dental care in the provinces but they’ll stop it’s implementation. So now we have to pay extra to get the private sector to fund it, and they win again since we just privatised some of our healthcare.

        • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
          2·
          6 months ago

          I think it’d be a stretch to call some of those provincial ‘health insurance’ programs functional in several aspects.

        • Mongostein@lemmy.ca
          2·
          6 months ago

          Here in Alberta our premier refuses to co-operate with the feds. One benefit is that Marlaina Smith can’t fuck with the program.

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
        52·
        6 months ago

        I would guess it’s also part of the bigger picture to privatize government services, which almost every Westernized nation has been doing … because capitalism does everything better. /s

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    61·
    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    “I haven’t seen patients in this condition since I did overseas mission dentistry work in Haiti and Peru.”

    Lee said his clinic has been reimbursed for the procedures within 48 hours by Sunlife, the insurance company that Ottawa contracted to administer the plan.

    For most of the procedures he’s done, Lee said, the federal government is reimbursing him at about 80 to 90 per cent of what the Ontario Dental Association recommends.

    But provincial dental associations across Canada have raised concerns about the CDCP, arguing the national program requires dentists to agree to unnecessary terms and conditions.

    The auditing process also allows Sunlife to request individual patient records, which isn’t something other insurance programs require and could lead to privacy issues, Nicolucci said.

    and an expert in dental public health, said he’s optimistic about the program’s prospects for success, especially as dentists and their patients get used to the new system in the weeks and months ahead.

    The original article contains 727 words, the summary contains 146 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!