HOW DENTAL FEES HURT THE YOUNG TOO<\/p>\n
The cost of dental care can be a strain for younger Singaporeans, too, especially when major dental procedures arise unexpectedly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms Bernice Sim, a student at Nanyang Technological University, had severe wisdom tooth pain in the past month, which meant she could not delay surgery. She went to a private dental clinic, where the bill eventually exceeded S$1,800.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first medical cost that I have incurred that reached four digits\u2026 (but) it couldn\u2019t really be avoided,\u201d said the 22-year-old. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms Sim said she had to dip into her savings to pay the additional S$300 in out-of-pocket costs, while the surgery effectively wiped out her MediSave balance.<\/p>\n
She might have gone to a polyclinic or national dental centre, which offer dental care services at more heavily subsidised rates, but she was in too much pain to wait for an appointment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a parliamentary reply in January 2025, MOH said the median waiting time for new appointments for non-emergency basic dental services at polyclinics was about three months, while specialist services at national dental centres had a waiting time of about one month. Emergency cases, however,\u00a0were seen on the same day.<\/p>\n
Other younger patients who opted to seek treatment at private dental clinics spoke of similarly hefty bills. One of them, 42-year-old Jarieul Wong, spent years and thousands of dollars trying to save one tooth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What began as a slight discolouration in one of the public relations professional’s front teeth eventually turned into a five-year dental ordeal that started in 2019, which cost him close to S$10,000, all out of his own pocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it was just discolouration,\u201d he said. \u201cI was shocked at the price.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He first had to undergo a root canal and replacement work costing about S$4,000, but the treated tooth began darkening again. Multiple dentists told him bacteria\u00a0might have remained deep within the tooth and that cracks\u00a0might have formed in the root.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One attempted to save the tooth with bone grafting and other procedures, which cost him about S$2,000, but the treatment was ultimately unsuccessful. On top of that, he was also fitted with a temporary denture, which cost him another S$500.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The dentists he consulted further told him it would cost another S$5,000 to fix the issue, but he did some research on getting treatment overseas and eventually travelled to Bangkok for bridge treatment, which cost about S$2,240, along with airfares.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I feel relieved (that it is over), but this is just one tooth. I’m not doing major dental work. That is the frustrating part, I’m spending so much on one tooth.”<\/p>\n
A dental bridge is a treatment that replaces one or more missing teeth by attaching artificial teeth to the natural teeth on either side of the gap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOW DENTAL FEES HURT THE YOUNG TOO The cost of dental care can be a strain for younger…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,64269,137,500],"class_list":["post-703705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dental","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}