Monday 9 November 2009

Extraction

Having just been to the dentist, I am wondering quite how many people need, not so much dental work, but certainly eye treatment or prescriptions, and are not already exempt from the charges. You have to be over 18, under 60, living in England, and not blessed with all sorts of medical conditions or benefit entitlements. Even leaving aside the question of dental work, surely most eye checks or prescriptions are of or to the old, the very young, the long-term sick, or the disabled? Never mind people in parts of the Kingdom where these charges do not apply. So why not simply abolish those charges? Along with the dental ones, in fact.

23 comments:

  1. Hi David, in the last financial year patient dental charges contributed over £550 million, or just over 20% of the total cost of dentistry. You're right that many people don't have to pay - in fact, around half of NHS dental activity is for patients who don't pay charges. Those who do pay, though, are contributing a very substantial amount of money. Making dentistry free is possible, but you'd need to find more than half a billion pounds to cover it, at a time when the public finances are under severe pressure.

    Since the people who currently pay dental charges are those who are most able to pay, making dentistry free would disproportionately benefit the richest, and would not make any difference at all to the poorest. On that basis, I suspect the government is unlikely to back your proposal.

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  2. There would be plenty of votes in it.

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  3. Sometimes you have to do the right thing, not the popular thing.

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  4. Sometimes, they are the same thing.

    If everyone else in the UK can have these things free, if well-paid people still at work in their sixties can, if people on certain benefits that continue to be paid in work can, if the boys of Eton and the girls of Cheltenham Ladies College can, they why can't everyone in England?

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  5. Because it costs more than half a billion pounds. Honestly, David, you're slow sometimes.

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  6. So do a lot of rather less deserving things.

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  7. Half a billion is peanuts compared to bank bailouts and wars.

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  8. Worried about some loss to your gargantuan income, Tooth doc?

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  9. If you don't believe in abolishing charges, then you don't believe in the NHS. Free at the point of need. That is the whole idea. All else is a betrayal.

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  10. Impatient Patient11 November 2009 at 18:30

    Whose overcharging is costing this much, and how are they related to the politicians of all parties who will not do this most basic of things?

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  11. Don't forget their pecuniary interests in the wars and the bank bailouts, too. Yes, those whose comments I have not put up. That means you.

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  12. Dental Derek is David Lindsay11 November 2009 at 18:44

    That's so funny. You've been totally humiliated and exposed for your ignorance so you invent a host of sock puppets! Who do you think you're fooling?

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  13. Tragically, I really do think that you beleive that. The English working poor, and even those on middle incomes, are an entirely closed book to you. New Labour, indeed. Regardless of the colour of your rossette.

    "Humiliated", how, anyway? There has been no answer to my and other people's questions about the vastly greater costs of wars and bailouts, nor about the existing or expected pecuniary interests of the politicians in question. No doubt including yourself eventually.

    In best New Labour fashion, you genuinely do want the lower orders to be blind, toothless, and unable to afford prescription drugs. You are a true Heir to Blair.

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  14. You are the one who is funny, saying that I am David. You have never met anyone who disagreed with you. Ever, ever, ever.

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  15. But it is chilling all the same, the power that these people have.

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  16. DDIDL, you are wasting your time. I am not allowing up any more of your silly comments, you greedy, vicious cancer on the body politic. Go and kill some Afghans, or indeed poor people in Britain, as you creatures do in the evenings. And in the afternoons. And in the mornings.

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  17. David, it really is obvious that you and Dental Derek are the same person. It's not a very clever tactic.

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  18. Making dentistry free would make no difference to my income, Anonymous. I don't mind whether I'm paid by patient charges or by the state directly. I don't think you've thought your criticism through.

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  19. I know exactly who Dental Derek is. I suspected it, and he emailed em last night to confirm it. But you people really cannot cope with anyone who disagrees with you, because it has never happened in your pampered little lives.

    Still no answers, I see: the vastly greater costs of wars and bailouts, nor about the existing or expected pecuniary interests of the politicians in question, the fact that you (probably not Tooth doc, but the rest of you) genuinely wish toothless blindness on the lower orders.

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  20. Well, I can't speak for your other commentators, David, but for me:

    I'm against wars and bailouts, but for rich people paying for their own dentistry, so the fact that wars and bailouts cost more isn't a reason to cancel dental charges; similarly, if there are MPs who stand to make money from wars and bailouts (or dental charging) then that's bad and wrong, but so is giving the rich free fillings; and finally, my plan for the lower orders involves toothless, malnourished blindness - I, of course, genuinely mean this.

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  21. Define "rich people". And is England the only part of the United Kingdom to contain them?

    Whoever and wherever they are, if they can get free operations, then why not free eye tests, free dental treatment and free prescriptions?

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  22. Because we can spend that money better on other things? Such as for example, cancer drugs, MRI screening, re-opening railways (which as I believe you know can be vastly expensive) or restoring the patriarchy.

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  23. Don't try and be clever, it doesn't suit your kind.

    In the great scheme of things, the cost of this would be negligible. Much of the country has already done it. It says a great deal that you and yours are so opposed to it. A very great deal indeed.

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