In Australia, the private health insurance system is based on individuals or families purchasing an insurance policy that covers all or part of the cost of private health care. Private health insurance cover is generally divided into hospital cover, general treatment cover and ambulance cover. General treatment cover provides insurance against costs of treatment by ancillary health service providers, including dentists. The extent of cover depends on the type of policy purchased.
Key terms
- Dentate: Having one or more natural teeth.
- Edentulous: A state of complete loss of all natural teeth.
- Constant prices: Constant price expenditure adjusts current prices for the effects of inflation— see Glossary in Health expenditure Australia 2017–18.
Data in this section were sourced from the National Dental Telephone Interview Survey 2013 (AIHW 2016). This section reports the proportion of Australians who held private health insurance cover for dental expenses at the time of the survey.
Half (50%) of all people aged 5 years and over had some level of private health insurance cover for dental expenses
The proportion of people aged 5 years and over with some level of private health insurance cover for dental expenses was:
- higher for adults aged 45–64 (57%) than those aged 15–24 (44%)
- twice as high for dentate people (51%) than edentulous people (25%).
Explore the data using the Private health insurance interactive 1 below.