Dental care in Australia is too expensive for many Australians, including some with private health insurance, while hundreds of thousands eligible for public dental services face a long wait, a new survey has found.
Preliminary results from a detailed survey of healthcare and health insurance use in Australia, conducted by the Ipsos Social Research Institute, showed that around 1.9 million people went without dental care in 2009 because they could not afford it.
The early results of the detailed survey of 2,700 Australians also revealed cost as a major reason for about 3.5 million Australians having avoided the dentist for more than four years.
Around 300,000 of those who are eligible for public dental care currently sit on waiting lists, according to the survey, slightly lower than previous estimates which put the number at around half a million.
Those aged 65 years and older were the least likely to have missed important dental work in the last year out of all age groups surveyed, according to Ipsos director, Ryan Williams.