Australian PM blasts opposition leader over dental scheme
The new Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has launched a ferocious attack on the opposition leader, Tony Abbott over a proposed dental scheme.
Ms Gillard criticised Mr Abbot and accused him of blocking the introduction of a Commonwealth dental scheme, which was proposed and approved at the last election. The government has not put this scheme into practice because the Senate would not agree to get rid of the Medicare system and there was not enough money available to run both schemes simultaneously.
The Medicare dental scheme, which was established by Mr Abbot during his tenure as health minister, allows patients a payment of up to $4,250 for patients with chronic health conditions to pay for dental care. The scheme is popular with the public and has generated treatment costs of nearly one billion dollars since its introduction in 2007. Labour’s new teen dental scheme, which was introduced to make dental care more accessible to teenagers, has failed to reach targets since it was established two years ago.
Julia Gillard hit out at Mr Abbot, saying he had turned a blind eye to the problem of public dentistry in Australia and was letting people down by considering dental health as a key policy. However, Han Zoellner, a campaigner for better public dental services, said that the Commonwealth scheme championed by Labour would probably not treat as many patients as the current Medicare programme and accused Labour of misleading people by making these claims.
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