Mandatory Dental Exams
I read on asia.nikkei.com yesterday that the Japanese government is considering making annual dental exams mandatory, in order to find problems earlier and reduce overall lifetime medical spending. Yearly dental exams are currently mandatory only through high school in Japan, not for adults.
A survey conducted in 2016 by the health ministry, found that only 53% of people had received a dental check up in the previous year, and less than 45% of those in their 20s and 30s had a check up in the previous year.
The plan is that regular checkups will help people stay healthier for longer by identifying problems early that may lead to more serious problems if untreated. Groups such as the Japan Dental Federation and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are advocating for these measures before the upper house election in July.
I have not heard of mandatory dental exams before. I agree that annual dental exams are a good thing, but how would mandatory exams be enforced? Everyone in Japan is required to have health insurance, and a check up and teeth cleaning is very inexpensive with the required health insurance, so I don't mind getting my teeth cleaned and checked every six months. Why wouldn't someone want to get a check up? It looks like people don't want to get a check up or the government wouldn't be talking about making it mandatory.
Is an annual dental check up mandatory where you live? Is it covered by health insurance? Is it expensive? I'm always curious about how things are done in other countries.
4 comments:
Mandatory dental exams are an interesting concept! I think there should be free dental exams, particularly for children. It is probably the cost that makes people avoid them here. A lot of poor children probably never see a dentist, and one of the sure signs of poverty is having missing teeth.
I haven't heard anything about this yet. Hm, mandatory, eh? I, too, wonder how the authorities are going to check on this? I agree that we should be encouraged to have our teeth checked and tended to, but why make it compulsory? There are people who fear the dentist, there are people who can't afford dental care...
How teeth are treated has undergone a great change in Japan in the 40 years I have been here. At the beginning of the 80s there were many people flashing gold teeth, then there were many who had all their teeth extracted and replaced with a full set of false dentures. In the 90s many young brides-to-be were encouraged to replace crocked or discoloured, but healthy, teeth, especially at the front, with new implanted ones before the wedding, in order to be 'a beautiful bride'.
Then came a period when children were given braces, and after that came the craze for bleaching or whitening the teeth. Now it is the implant that is the trend. Young pensioners are encouraged to spend their savings on surgical implants.
It'sneither mandatory nor covered by insurance unless you happen to have dental insurance, which most done. I have some coverage -- about 50 percent of each visit up to $600, so it pretty much gets your exam and cleaning and xrays and not much more!
Dental checkups are free with the (mandatory) health insurance in Germany. However, dental replacement is only covered to an extent. We get a stamp card that we can fill with yearly checkups, and if you've got your stamp x years in a row, they will cover a larger percentage.
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