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and personal expense to adolescents will prevent the work done in
the schools being wasted, and will prevent the expense of extractions
and dentures usually necessary in early adult life.
A complete scheme of dental benefit should consist of propaganda,
extractions, scalings, fillings and dentures; the scope of the benefit
to be granted depending on the demand rate and the funds available.
Many agree that propaganda should be a charge on insurance funds.
One opinion is that treatment to render the mouth healthy such as
extractions, scalings and possibly fillings, is only financially possible
on a capitation fee basis. One's experience teaches that patients
object to having diseased teeth removed if there is no prospect of
dentures being subsequently fitted. Many complain, too, of the
discomfort and indigestion experienced even during the period
that must elapse between extraction and the fitting of dentures,
and many make great sacrifices to pay for dentures even to the
extent of borrowing. Apparently, the more popular idea is that the
complete scheme of dental benefit should be granted, at an agreed
scale of charges, administered by a panel of dentists under somewhat
similar control as obtains with medical benefit, and granted as a
statutory benefit with a prior claim on funds than heretofore with
larger grants to patients. A greater demand rate is to be expected,
but a levelling up would occur in the lessened expenditure on medical
benefit due to the eradication of those illnesses traceable to diseased
oral conditions.
While the dental profession favours the " panel " there are many
advocates of what may be described as the " clinic " system.
Approved societies and industrial concerns have started their own
clinics and the clinic is considered to be the best method to deal
with maternity and child welfare, school treatment, and tuberculosis
cases. The protagonists of the " panel" argue that this is the only
method whereby " free choice " of dentist is possible, where the
proper professional relations between dentist and patient may exist,
and where lay control is reducible to a minimum. Coercion in any
form is contrary not only to the Insurance Act but also to professional
ethics and the individual may elect to be attended by a certain