Seven hundred dentists are to vote on withdrawing from the dental treatment service for medical card holders because fees are 12 per cent lower than those paid for treating people with full PRSI entitlements.
If the dentists withdraw from the scheme one million medical card holders will not be eligible for the routine treatment. Services for children, whose teeth are checked and treated through health boards, will not be affected.
The decision to ballot for action was taken at a meeting of the Irish Dental Association executive last night. The scheme affected is the Department of Health's Dental Treatment Service Scheme (DTSS).
The DTSS was introduced on a phased basis in 1994. It was designed to ensure that adult medical card holders, who were entitled only to emergency treatment, would have access to the full range of dental treatment.
IDA members have two main grievances, according to the IDA's general secretary, Mr Donal Atkins. The first is the slow rate at which the DTSS is being introduced. It has yet to be extended to the 35 to 65 age group. The second is that the Department is paying fees 12 per cent lower than those paid to dentists when they provide identical treatment for people on the scheme run by the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs for workers with sufficient PRSI contributions. There are about 1.3 million in the latter category.
After the executive meeting, the IDA president, Dr Martin Holohan, said: "The most vulnerable and needy patients in our community are being denied proper access to treatment. The IDA can no longer endorse a health scheme which blatantly discriminates against medical card holders and which is not adequately funded."