A primer on the Canadian Dental Care Plan
It’s a pity there hasn’t been a better communications plan for the new dental care plan the federal government is rolling out in May 2024. Better communications would give it a greater chance of success. Be that as it may, the NDP has been campaigning for a tax-paid dental care plan for years and what the feds are rolling out is one price the NDP is exacting for continuing political support, saving us from having to go to the polls before 2025. The rollout is being rushed because the NDP is worried that unless the Plan is up and running before the next election, a possible Conservative government next year will cancel its implementation.
Herewith, a few facts and a few unanswered questions.
To begin, this is not a universalanyone-can-register-for-tax-paid-dental care plan. That would be too expensive for the state of Canada’s finances right now. The rush to implement prompted the federal government to do everything itself. The CDCP is basically a health insurance plan run by Health Canada and contracted out to Sunlife to administer. It’s definitely not like Medicare.
This plan is coming in stages. To qualify, you must: not have access to another dental insurance plan; have an adjusted family net income of less than $90,000/year; be a Canadian resident for tax purposes and have filed your tax return last year. Right now, you also have to be age 70 or older, but starting in May you can register if you’re 65-69. By 2025 all remaining eligible Canadians can register. Here’s the Government of Canada CDCP site: - https://www.canada.ca/en/services/ benefits/dental/dental-care-plan.html . And here’s Sun Life’s CDCP site: https://www.sunlife.ca/sl/cdcp/en/
To date, well over a million Canadians have registered – certainly an indication that such insurance is in high demand with prospective patients/ clients, even with the difficulties many of us have getting access to primary healthcare and family doctors. The same cannot be said of the provinces nor the dental care associations. Their noses are out of joint, with some good reasons. Traditionally, health care is the purview of provinces – they design their own programs and the feds transfer money to them to help fund it. This time round, Health Canada running the show is one of the reasons the plan is having a difficult birth – neither the provinces nor the dental care associations feel they’ve been sufficiently consulted in the design of this addition to healthcare.
Each provincial and territorial dental association has its own guide that says how much dental services cost in their regions. Based on what they know right now, the CDCP will pay out less than is recommended by provincial and territorial guides. The Canadian Health Coalition, an advocacy group that strongly supports the CDCP says Health Canada has agreed to pay 80-90 percent of the fee guides and that dental providers are allowed to bill the client for the rest. Of course, billing the client for anything is one of the contentious issues. Federal officials say the fees are expected to evolve and be updated as the program is rolled out.
According to their national associations, there are approximately 26,500 dentists, 1,700 independent hygienists and 2,400 denturists practising in Canada — 30,500 in total. Given the criticisms of the Canadian Dental Association, it’s no surprise that its survey of dentists last month suggests a majority don’t intend to register with the federal system. Your intrepid reporter did a fast search of the Sunlife website for dental care providers, typing in only the biggest cities she could remember across the country. The site shows at least 3,000 dentists already signed up, with every province and territory covered. (Smith’s Falls and Sherbrooke are covered too.) The government has just announced that dental care providers no longer have to sign up in advance. The government is saying, “just try us out.”
To recap: Is dental care free? Not necessarily – patients may pay outof-pocket for services and fees that aren’t covered under the federal government’s plan. Can I choose my own dentist? Maybe – if your dentist is participating in the plan. If not, you’ll have to search for one who is. How will the Plan protect existing work, school and/or group dental benefits? We don’t yet know. How will the CDCP work with other publicly funded dental programs? It looks like you can sign up with the CDCP.
Our highly politicized world requires that we take a cleansing breath and get some perspective. Recall for a moment the traumatic birth of Medicare in Canada. Physician ‘opting out’, a doctors’ strike, vicious propaganda campaigns against ‘socialized medicine’ between 1960 and 1965 that didn’t stop even when the feds offered to pay half the cost of any provincial Medicare plan that met their criteria of comprehensiveness, portability, universality, and public administration. It took another three years before the provinces accepted Ottawa’s contribution toward their own provincial health insurance programs.
Without question, the rollout of this new program has not been good. Without question, the coverage is not perfect. However, it looks better than the presently available provincial dental programs. Compared to the personal devastation of rotten teeth, gum disease and generally bad oral hygiene; compared to the cost to our healthcare system of emergency room treatment of these conditions, a little patience to get a dental care plan in place would be priceless.