Savings sought to boost dental health

14 Oct 2012, 2:05 pm   -   Source: AAP
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek says government must find more savings to boost dental health. (AAP)

Health Minister Tanya Plibersek says government must find more savings to boost dental health. (AAP)

Health Minister Tanya Plibersek says her department and the rest of the government must find more savings to pay for programs like the dental scheme.

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Health Minister Tanya Plibersek says her department along with the rest of the federal government must find more savings to pay for programs such as the dental health scheme.

The search for spending cuts follows further tax revenue writedowns, a drop in the prices for commodities, and a $2 billion blowout in processing the increase in asylum seeker claims.

Treasury has forecast a thin $1.5 billion budget surplus for 2012/13, a turnaround from a $43.7 billion deficit in the previous year.

"I can tell you we will have to find money across government, including in the health portfolio, in the mid-year economic forecast," Ms Plibersek told Network Ten on Sunday.

The government is scheduled to release its mid-year budget update before the end of November.

Ms Plibersek said savings could be found in administration without cutting frontline services.

"When you make savings there's good ways to making savings and bad ways if you target waste and mismanagement," she said.

But the commonwealth would not follow the state governments of Queensland, NSW and Victoria in removing frontline services, Ms Plibersek said.

"You could not have seen more brutal cuts than the cuts to breast-cancer services in Queensland and so we are not about cutting services to patients," she said.

The government is closing the Chronic Diseases Dental Scheme (CDDS) on November 30 and replacing it with a new arrangement for dentistry.

Annual costs to administer the CDDS introduced during the Howard government had risen from $90 million to nearly $1 billion.

Ms Plibersek said the government had allocated $515.3 million in the May budget for when the new scheme is scheduled to begin on December 1.

"All I need from the states is their agreement that they will not reduce their effort in public dental," she said.

Ms Plibersek said the new scheme would aid low-income earners and 3.4 million children.

The previous scheme was not means-tested and there were no rules about the type of treatment that could be accessed under it, she said.

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