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Medicare option for public denture patientsA Sale dental technician has found an alternative Medicare-funded option that will enable many Gippsland pensioners to obtain dentures at a reasonable cost in the wake of the effective collapse of the state denture scheme. By Kevin Balshaw - 5th November 2009 - Back to News A Sale dental technician has found an alternative Medicare-funded option that will enable many Gippsland pensioners to obtain dentures at a reasonable cost in the wake of the effective collapse of the state denture scheme.
Trevor Cox, who has operated a dental clinic in Sale the past 30 years, was the last technician east of the Latrobe Valley still providing a full denture service to public patients when the state scheme stalled in July.
The Member for Eastern Victoria, Philip Davis, has been working with Trevor over the past 18 to secure an increase in state rebates to dental technicians serving public patients.
The Government’s refusal to honour a promise to lift the rebates effectively ended the denture service from July this year when further cost increases were imposed on technicians.
Since then, Trevor has come across a little known Commonwealth scheme that provides for Medicare rebates for dentures for patients in cases where the provision of a denture fits in with their overall medical treatment plan for a chronic illness.
As a result, he has been able to continue catering for public patients in the region at an affordable cost and without them facing long delays that are the general situation under the state scheme.
The scheme reimburses patients who have a chronic medical problem that can be alleviated if they are provided with a new denture. The gap that patients have to pay is around $150 for a full top denture and $380 for both upper and lower dentures.
First, though, patients must be referred by their doctor for the denture service as part of their overall medical treatment plan.
But Mr Davis said he maintained a concern that this did not resolve the collapse of the Victorian scheme, and the Government should act to fund it fully, as it had promised, to provide the cheapest possible service to patients and reduce their waiting times.
"The problem began when the Victorian Government reneged on an undertaking originally made back in 2001 to maintain rebate payments for public services to dental prosthetists at the same rate as the Commonwealth Department of Veterans Affairs," he said.
"The Victorian denture scheme rebates are only around 60% of those paid by the Commonwealth to war veterans. The Health Minister has yet to meet a promise to produce a paper on the rebates in response to my request in the first half of last year."
The Victorian Government spends around $12 million on the denture scheme. It would cost another $4.25 million to increase the rebate on dentures to parity with the Commonwealth.
Source: http://gippsland.com/ Published by: kevin.balshaw@parliament.vic.gov.au
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