Canada’s new dental care plan collapsing under its own weight, experts say

Despite a massive rollout, millions of eligible Canadians are not using the new federal dental plan.

The Canadian Dental Care Plan saw a managed launch over the last few years; however, it wasn’t until this past spring that 18- to 64-year-old Canadians became eligible, marking the first time many residents received coverage.

On paper, the program exists to provide Canadians who can’t access coverage, such as through work benefits or elsewhere, subsidized care through federal channels.

According to Health Canada, since its initial launch to the greater populace, around 5 million Canadians have enrolled.

However, out of that pool, nearly 2 million individuals have not utilized available care.

Throw in a recent error where 70,000 people were notified they were either ineligible for care or provided funds for which they were not eligible, and authorities within the dental community are concerned that the CDCP is already buckling under its own weight — something touched on in the spring by concerned dentists and hygienists, who are now seeing these concerns take shape.

“I’m not surprised, because depending on the region in the country, some dentists haven’t even applied or haven’t even registered to be providers under the CDCP. Many feel they are already at capacity and can’t even provide these services,” Donna Wells, manager of Professional Practice at the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association (CDHA), told INsauga.com.

Wells continued to note that, overall, the CDCP, despite its staggered strategy, was incredibly rushed, and that the growing pains Canadians now have to navigate are not surprising.

“It has been a year and a half now, and we’re still seeing some administrative challenges for sure. In terms of those people who recently got approved, that shouldn’t have been approved, I have heard reports from hygienists across the country, where people are coming in trying to use CDCP coverage on top of what they already have through another company — there is definitely some abuse happening,” says Wells.

INsauga.com reached out to the federal Ministry of Health to inquire about the current status of the CDCP after its recent administrative hiccups.

“We are committed to ensuring that publicly funded programs such as the CDCP are administered with integrity, in accordance with the eligibility criteria and with responsible stewardship of public funds. An error was recently discovered with respect to how income was calculated for some applicants, at the time their eligibility for CDCP was being determined. A system fix has already been implemented to correct this error,” a representative told INsauga.com via email.

Secondary sources also concur that the rollout was doomed to fail, as Dr. David Brown, head of the Ontario Dental Association (ODA), indicated that staffing issues, in tandem with holes in client eligibility, ensured the CDCP — in its current state — will continue to limp until remedied.

“We asked Health Canada not to expand too quickly. We wanted to make sure we have everything in place, make sure the number of staff is appropriate, and ensure that the details were secure before anything went forward,” Brown told INsauga.com.

Alongside this throughline in the Canadian dental community is also an issue that, according to Brown, likely ties directly to why half of the millions of registered Canadians who jumped onto the CDCP have yet to access any of the supports that came with it.

“The government, at least early on, was advertising it as this free program. We knew from the beginning that it was not going to be a free program, and that it was essentially a built-in federal co-pay upwards of 40 to 60 per cent. So that was a major misplay from the government early on as well, not indicating clearly that it was just a subsidy,” says Brown.

Brown also remains cautious about the prospect that employers may view the CDCP as a golden ticket to slash dental coverage, as, according to Brown, roughly two-thirds of Canadians have dental coverage in some form through an employer. If such action were taken on a large enough scale, the snowballing effect of that many individuals jumping onto CDCP coverage would snap a system already collapsing in on itself.

One diagnosis that Wells and Brown don’t see eye-to-eye on, however — which remains an ongoing discourse in the dental community — is staffing numbers correlating to lack of care being available through CDCP applications.

“There remains an issue around shortage, and we know that colleges are closing, and we need to make sure that sufficient staffing is dealt with,” says Brown.

Wells, however, does not buy into this theory or its alleged impact on the CDCP, stating, “We’re still hearing this rhetoric from dentists that there aren’t enough providers. So, we still hold fast to the fact that we know numerous dental hygienists are graduating every year, and we know that number is increasing.”

As for potential solutions, fueled by an urgency not to let the system remain in freefall, Brown has, alongside his colleagues, taken these concerns to the federal Minister of Health, in an effort to showcase that some major restructuring needs to take place if the CDCP will have any legs left to take it into the future.

“The government needs to go over these details and make sure nothing gets skipped or dropped… We are glad things are moving forward, just not with the proper care and details that need to be managed.”

INsauga’s Editorial Standards and Policies