Achi news desk-
Nancy Slauenwhite has been eagerly awaiting the launch of the Canada Dental Care Plan (CDCP.)
Although he has no dental care, the 72-year-old needs some dental work.
So when she received her federal CDCP card in the mail, she contacted her dental office to make an appointment.
“I was so excited,” Slauenwhite said.
But the receptionist she spoke to on the phone had bad news.
“He said ‘we are not currently accepting clients under that plan,'” Slauenwhite said.
Georgina MacDonald also received her federal dental care plan in the mail but was unable to find a dentist’s office that was enrolled in the program and accepted her as a patient.
The 78-year-old gave up trying after speaking to five different dental officers in the Halifax region with no success.
“Like a lot of other people, I don’t have dental coverage and so I don’t go to the dentist as often as I should,” MacDonald said.
In May, eligible Canadians aged 65 and over will be eligible for the CDCP but MacDonald questions what good the national program is if he can’t find a dentist to honor the terms.
“Nobody honors the card until they get more information, that’s what I understand,” MacDonald said. “To me that makes the card useless.”
Of the 600 dentists in Nova Scotia at the moment, only a handful are registered.
The president of the Nova Scotia Dental Association says at last count there may be four to six dental offices registered.
Dr says Juli Waterbury that contract issues and staffing restrictions lead to the low number of registrations.
“If you are already dealing with issues of capacity and staff shortages and you are not taking any new patients, than having to deal with this administrative burden, and ensure that you meet all the criteria of this scheme, for some offices, too much,” said Waterbury, a registered dentist and president of the NSDA.
While trying to find answers from the dental office, Slauenwhite was told to contact his MLA, who then directed him to contact the federal government.
He shared his disappointment in a letter to the prime minister.
“I tried to choose my words carefully but there were a few caps and exclamation marks,” said Slauenwhite. “They tell us they’re going to do something like that to us, and then shoot us down.”
The Canadian Association of Retired Persons has been advocating for a national dental care plan for years and its former chair and senior spokesperson Bill VanGorder says the submission is well founded.
“We have over ten thousand members in Nova Scotia and I hear from them regularly saying, ‘they have this card in the mail but it’s not doing anything for them,'” he said. VanGorder.
Many seniors, VanGorder said, have put off dental work before this program, only to hit a road block and be worse off because of it.
“They don’t have an agreement with the dentists and they don’t have an agreement with the other States, there is no program,” he said.
The Nova Scotia dental association says the federal government is looking at an alternative route for dentists to participate in the national dental program without registering and signing individual contracts
Waterbury estimates a new agreement could be reached before the end of the summer, but says there is no clear indication whether the federal government has considered all their concerns.
Meanwhile many seniors like Slauenwhite are waiting for that promised care plan.
“They have to get their act together,” he said.
