Summary
Access to dental care in the UK is worsening as private fees for procedures like root canals (£775), tooth extractions (£435), and white fillings (£325) have risen by up to 32% since 2022.
The scarcity of NHS dentists is forcing patients to turn to expensive private care, leaving many unable to afford treatment.
Patient groups warn this trend risks deteriorating public oral health.
Rising operational costs, a nationwide dentist shortage, and underfunded NHS services are fueling the crisis, prompting calls for reforms and increased NHS investment.
Britain saw the US and thought “they clearly don’t know what they’re doing. we’re smarter and will make private health insurance work”
Welcome to the financial threat of surviving!
What is dumber than watching something completely broken fail but choosing to do it anyway?
Those jokes were about pre-NHS dental care and lack thereof. My working-class British dad had teeth so bad that about 10 years after he retired, he and my mom went down to Costa Rica because a vacation to Costa Rica where he could get free dental care was cheaper than what he was going to have to pay in the U.S. Medicare also doesn’t cover dental and it would have cost $20,000 to fix all the problems that hadn’t been fixed when he was a kid. He had been in the U.S. since the 1960s, but it was always way too expensive to fix no matter what dental plan he was on.
For a long time, the NHS made those jokes no longer true.
They’re going to be true again.
Exhibit 101294050683908 of why private health care is bad for society.
These dentists are the worst sort of people, they think they have great business acumen making these profits but they really are just working a monopoly. If they truly are business orientated let them invent something and go market it and be an actual entrepreneur in the real world, if not go back to caring for people as they were trained to do and make enough money to live a comfortable life but not extort people.
How much does it cost to fly somewhere with affordable dental care?
