Our teeth are important. Let’s treat them that way, says Sonya Bateson.
OPINION
Once upon a time, there was a silly teenager (myself) who made dumb and impulsive choices around her friends.
This teenager, who turned 18 one week earlier, was celebrating her newly-arrived “adulthood” by drinking a cold beverage on a hot, summer’s day.
Alas, the teenager had unknowingly bought beers with cap lids, and had no way to open them.
“Open it with your teeth!” one of her friends said, then demonstrated the technique by leveraging the cap upon a molar and popping it off.
The dumb teenager attempted to follow suit. Unlike her much cooler friend, though, the dumb teenager instead chipped off a small chunk of her tooth.
So embarrassing.
But the chip was small enough that it didn’t cause any pain so the teenager decided against visiting the dentist. She knew that as a new 18-year-old, the visit would probably cost her an entire week’s part-time wages.
Year after year, she put off getting that tooth fixed. And year after year, the chip gradually grew larger. But the tooth never caused any pain and so the teenager-turned-adult continued to neglect it.
As the years went on, the tooth would sometimes cause a little pain and would need a thorough cleaning. But the flare-ups were many months apart so the tooth remained unfixed, growing worse at a snail’s pace.
Until one day, that teenager-turned-adult gave birth to a child, and a whole raft of formerly neglected minor health niggles, brushed aside for years, were suddenly major problems.
That chipped molar decided enough was enough and caused a painful infection. Chose a weekend to do it on too, the jerk.
And so the new mother was forced to make her first dental appointment in 15 years and the offending tooth was removed. What’s worse, given that she was a new mother, she was unable to take anything stronger than ibuprofen. That tooth truly got its revenge.
It cost a few hundred dollars and, as these things tend to go, happened right when money was at its tightest.
Lesson learned? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.
This teenager-turned-mother has never needed a filling and has a perhaps misplaced sense of pride in the strength of her teeth. After all, if that dumb teenager hadn’t tried to copy her friend, the tooth would probably still be in her mouth, strong and unharmed.
Why pay good money to fix something that ain’t broke?
I really wish I could change this mindset. It’s like owning a car – regular maintenance keeps everything in good condition and saves trouble down the road.
But when that maintenance is expensive, as dental care so often is, it’s easier to brush and floss daily and hope for the best.
In August last year, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS), a union for senior salaried doctors and dentists, released a report called Tooth be told – the case for universal dental care in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The report called dental treatment in New Zealand “prohibitively expensive” and said the cost “feeds directly into overall health inequality”.
Forty per cent of adults could not afford dental care, the report said, and in 2020 more than 1.5 million adults were estimated to have an unmet need for dental care due to cost.
ASMS executive director Sarah Dalton said free and subsidised access to adult dental care would carry a weighty upfront price tag but, in the longer term, it would save millions of health dollars.
Their research found that the Government would get a return of $1.60 for each dollar spent and the estimated economic benefits for society as a whole were estimated at $4.50 for every dollar spent.
It seems to me that the benefits of free dental care are clear.
Labour announced a new policy this week to offer some free dental care to all under-30s starting from mid-2025.
The policy would offer free annual check-ups, cleans, X-rays, basic fillings, and extractions at an estimated cost of $390 million for the first four years of implementation.
The Green Party announced a free dental care policy in August. It wants to establish a “New Zealand Dental Service” to provide free annual check-ups and cleanings to everyone, free basic care such as fillings and extractions, and funding for vans and clinics to help reach people in more remote areas.
The party promises to pay for their policy with revenue from a wealth tax.
In my opinion, it’s promising that our two largest left-wing parties are looking towards making dental care more affordable for all New Zealanders. I believe it’s an important area for them to focus on and would do a huge amount of good.
We only get one set of adult teeth, after all. Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever. It boggles my mind that adult dental care isn’t already an existing part of our public health system.
As someone who has suffered unnecessarily from avoiding expensive dental care, I am firmly in support of anything that’ll make it more accessible for all.
Our teeth are important. Let’s treat them that way.
Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.