I write this sat on the train to work. Every noise is like a dull thud, every bump a jarring, sometimes excruciating jab at my lower left jaw. At best, I know there’s something not right down there, at worst I want to scream, rip my own face apart, just to reach the area that hurts. Yup - it’s toothache time again, this time from a years old filling that’s given up the ghost. For a few days I’ve been living on codeine and a few drinks each evening, just to make it stop enough to sleep. I’ll get it pulled in a few days when I can’t take any more.
I didn’t look after my teeth very well when I was a kid - I got much, much better as I got older, when I realised that Pam Ayres was right and I did, indeed, wish I‘d looked after my teeth. I regularly attended check-ups, had a bit of work done to retain what I had and generally they were trouble free, if occasionally annoying. So far, so average.
Then COVID hit and I, like many others, found out that, while most healthcare professionals were heroically fighting a new, unknown virus, my dental surgery began offloading patients from its NHS list.
The spiel, and I know I’m not the only one, was patients would receive a text..
‘You’re due for a checkup - please phone to make an appointment’. There were no appointments.
Long story short, I, like many others, was eventually ‘de-listed’, taken off the NHS list for not attending appointments (during COVID when there weren’t any!), without due process being followed and without being told it was happening. Was this legal?
Ever since, when things have gone wrong, it’s basically been a case of having the cheapest dentist I could find pull any teeth that are problematic. Despite what you may think us councillors earn, even with my income from that and my day job, I earn more than ten thousand below the national average wage. I can’t afford £500 for a root canal that may not work. I’ve lost two so far, and at least two more will follow shortly.
And my current situation has inspired me to reach out to you all, and ask for your experiences. I’d like to let MP’s, Clinical Commissioning Groups and others know what it’s actually like. Y‘Know, for their vast majority of us.
And it’s been utterly and completely astounding. Some of the stories you have sent me are the kind of thing you’d expect to read about in tomes talking about the grim days of communism. I’ll be talking about them more in the future as I put together something to try and raise awareness and campaign for better care.
So, why are we here?
Dental provision in the UK has always been a mixture of private and public, I guess because people are prepared to pay for cosmetic improvements over the basic treatment offered by the NHS.
In recent times, the amount ‘per treatment’ dentists get from the government to cover their NHS dentistry costs have been cut, by inflation, employer national insurance contributions rising… all the usual things. Previous governments have committed to improving the dental contract and increasing the available ‘units of dental care’ that are available but have done the exact square root of nothing to improve matters. Nada. Not a sausage. The end result is one correspondent, with other serious health conditions, telling me that they’ve been waiting for an NHS dentist for 7 years.
So naturally, when a business can’t afford to offer a service, they look to withdraw it.
But this isn’t a loss making bus route, or an expensive cocktail that’s not selling well.
This is people’s health, both mental and physical. People’s self esteem. People’s hope. You have teeth pulled, and they’re visible, and you’re judged, or at least you feel you are. I daren’t smile any more, and as a public(ish) figure, I’m now petrified of speaking to groups of people in case I accidentally laugh, revealing the massive gap in my gnashers. Poor dental health as a youngster is linked to numerous serious health conditions and this follows them through life, yet the number one reason for paediatric hospital admissions in the UK is for dental care. I never thought I’d ever be tempted to use the ghastly Richard Littlejohn’s catchphrase, but you really couldn’t make it up.
.
Yes, we can take out health insurance or dental plans. But this doesn’t cover the cost of dental care - it doesn’t come close. And the point is, if we knew we needed to, we would all have begun saving years ago - we thought we were, through national insurance contributions! This has been entirely sprung on a nation - we all expected NHS dentistry to always be available.
And now it’s not, what the hell are we supposed to do?
Borrow from banks, parents, whoever?
Pull out our own teeth with pliers?
Wait for inheritances to arrive?
Sit and suffer?
People are being asked to take out huge financial plans to cover treatment that in some cases costs as much as a new car. So they don’t, because mostly they can’t afford it.
The new Labour government should stop messing around trying to reorganise local government and concentrate on something that actually affects the electorate, their well being and their health. They’ve been talking about introducing their new dental plan for ages, and they need to get on with it. An interim measure of 300,000 extra NHS dental appointments is ridiculous. You need the dentists to provide them - we don’t have them. Our dentists would provide these anyway if they had a contract that made it worth their while. The number of dentists is not the problem, it’s the amount they get paid for NHS work. I plan to make sure our local MP’s are well aware of this fact and hopefully take it further. I don’t know if it’ll change anything but I can’t just sit here and accept this.
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