The Federal Government has passed legislation closing the book around the Medicare Dental saga. The Dental Benefits Legislation Amendment Act 2014 (the Act), which was designed to bring an end to the previous Governments’ pursuit of dentists who treated more than a million Australians under the Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme (CDDS), received Royal Assent on 3 November. The provisions of the Act commenced on 4 November.
The Act amends the Health Insurance Act 1973 (HI Act) to require the Chief Executive Medicare (CEM) to waive debts raised against dentists in limited circumstances for services provided under the former Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. Debts will be waived for services provided before 1 April 2010 that had satisfied all legal requirements but had breached the reporting requirements under section 10(2) of the Health Insurance (Dental Services) Determination 2007.
Announcing the legislation earlier in the year, Mr Dutton said the dentists had done nothing more than make minor paperwork errors when treating patients under the CDDS.
“Labor had an ideological opposition to this scheme. The then Government sought to use the dentists’ technical oversights as a means of discrediting the scheme – it was a shameful act,” Mr Dutton said.
“Labor’s desire was simply to destroy a scheme helping Australians solely because its architect was Tony Abbott. In so doing they sought full recovery of all benefits paid to these dentists – an excessively severe punishment that caused huge anxiety. Dentists were simply used by Labor as political pawns.”
Mr Dutton said the CDDS set up in 2007 by the current Prime Minister and then Health Minister Tony Abbott was the biggest ever investment into dental care with concession card holders representing 80 per cent of people receiving treatment.
“When Labor finally admitted its pursuit of dentists, who treated these patients in good faith, for repayment of the Medicare Benefits they’d received; it set up a tortuous process to resolve the situation.
“This Bill will provide a better process for waiving those debts.”
The new Act also makes amendments to the HI Act and the Dental Benefits Act 2008 (DBA) to allow the Professional Services Review scheme to apply to dental services provided under the DBA and enhance compliance powers under the DBA by enabling the CEM and relevant employees of the Department of Human Services (DHS) to obtain documentation to substantiate the payment of dental benefits. These provisions apply to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule and are consistent with powers that apply to dental services provided under the HI Act.
A number of machinery amendments to the DBA are also made by the Act, specifically the clarifications of provisions related to the disclosure of protected information, allowing the delegation of Ministerial powers to the Secretary or SES employee of the Department of Health, amending the definition of ‘dental provider’ to align with the national registration law, and correcting a minor technical error in the ‘definitions’ section of the DBA.
