In Australia, individuals or families can purchase private health insurance to cover all or part of the cost of health care not covered by Medicare.
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 over time. Constant price expenditure is in 2020–21 prices.
Private health insurance cover for dental expenses
Data in this section were sourced from the National Dental Telephone Interview Survey (NDTIS) 2013 (AIHW 2016) and the NDTIS component of the National Study of Adult Oral Health 2017–18 (ARCPOH unpublished). This section reports the proportion of Australians who held private health insurance cover for dental expenses at the time of the surveys.
In both survey periods, around 1 in 2 people aged 5 years and over had some level of private health insurance cover for dental expenses
In 2017–18, the proportion of people aged 5 years and over with some level of private health insurance cover for dental expenses was:
- higher for children aged 5–14 (55%) than adults aged 65 years and over (46%)
- higher for dentate people (53%) than edentulous people (22%).
These trends were similar to those observed in 2013.
Explore the data using the Private health insurance interactive 1 below.