
Alberta to take a bite out of dental costs with new fee guide
Up until now, Alberta was the only province that didn’t produce a dental fee guide, a document that lists all dental procedures and their suggested costs. It didn’t used to be that way. The Alberta Dental Association and College used to publish such a guide but it decided to stop doing so in 1997.
Since then many Albertans felt they paid higher dental fees than neighbouring provinces. In a 2015 survey conducted for the Alberta Blue Cross, 87% of Albertans agreed that dental costs were unaffordable, and 79% felt the government should intervene and impose maximum fees.
In all other provinces, dental associations publish an annual fee guide. Dentists are free to charge whatever they want based on that suggested fee. With no available guide, Alberta dentists had no baseline to work with, making it hard for them — or their consumers — to determine what was reasonable or not.
A free market, it was thought, should be able to regulate itself. Many opponents of government intervention argued that fee guide or maximum fees would be a form of price fixing and limit competition.
However the price war never really happened: few dental offices posted their fees openly, making it hard for the consumer to shop around. Not surprisingly, 91% of Albertans thought that dental offices should be required to list their fees and 87% of them felt dental clinic should be free to advertise them. Many dentists blamed regulatory red tape for their inability to do so.
As for group plans, insurers had to make estimates in roundabout ways to determine what was usual and customary for dental procedures. Sometimes this meant group plans didn’t cover the whole cost of the claim, leaving the rest as an out of pocket expense to plan participants.
Widespread criticism of lack of transparency and spiralling dental costs led the Alberta government to undertake a review of its dental fees. Last December the province released its findings and confirmed that Alberta paid roughly 44% higher than neighbouring provinces.
Source: The Edmonton Journal
The fee guide will also be freely available to Albertans in order to help them shop for dental services. The danger of course is that while the fees listed are just a suggestion, consumers may wrongly believe that this is what dentists have to charge, which is the main reason why the province’s dental association discontinued the guide in the first place.
So far, the Albertan government has yet to announce an official publication date nor has it been forthcoming as to how it would calculate its suggested fees. But for insurers and plan sponsors this new guide should provide them with additional control on dental costs.
Originally published at www.facebook.com/GroupEmployeeBenefits
