I think it’s time to start taking seriously the idea of making dentistry in this country either free or heavily subsidised.

There have long been calls for this to happen, and in the last few months the noise has really started to ramp up. A petition was delivered to parliament, the Waitemata DHB joined the call, and the dentists themselves support the idea.

And for good reason. We’re hearing stories about children with teeth so badly rotten that they have abscesses, but are then being told to wait five months before the teeth can be extracted because medical staff can’t fit them. That’s five months on low level pain killers and antibiotics.

We’re hearing stories of adults so desperate that they’re extracting their own teeth, sometimes with power tools, because they can’t afford to go to the dentist.

And these stories are often coming from dentists who are doing this work for cheap or for free, just to fill gaps in our healthcare system.

And that’s the thing: it’s part of our healthcare system. The healthcare system that is free or heavily subsidised in this country, except for when it comes to dentistry. 

Your mouth is as much part of your health as your heart or your bones or your lungs. The Government helps you to pay to get the rest of your body fixed, but not your teeth.

And actually, there’s a strong argument that your mouth has more of an impact on your health than we think. Bad teeth can lead to a bad heart, maybe even to conditions like Alzheimer’s.

So funding dentistry could actually lead to health savings later on. Right now, we are forking out mega bucks to put people out under general anaesthetic and then pulling out all their rotten teeth. This is adding pressure to already over-stretched DHBs and emergency departments.

It won’t be cheap. One estimate reckons we’re spending as much $1.8 billion on dentists every year, and that the money being spent by people who can afford to spent it. So it’ll be a lot more than that once you add in the people who’re using power tools instead.

The Government sounds like its open to the idea. It acknowledges there’s a problem with the cost of dentistry in this country. There are hints we might see it promised at next year’s election, which I’d welcome/

This would be the meaning of well-being. It might even been a good thing to put into this Government’s first ever well-being budget, eh?