Study reports that middle income Canadians now have less access to dental care than the poor or the wealthy

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http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0057377

Is Accessing Dental Care Becoming More Difficult? Evidence from Canada's Middle-Income Population

Chantel Ramraj mail,

Laleh Sadeghi,

Herenia P. Lawrence,

Laura Dempster,

Carlos Qui?onez

Abstract
Objective

To explore trends in access to dental care among middle-income Canadians.
Methods

A secondary data analysis of six Canadian surveys that collected information on dental insurance coverage, cost-barriers to dental care, and out-of-pocket expenditures for dental care was conducted for select years from 1978 to 2009. Descriptive analyses were used to outline and compare trends among middle-income Canadians with other levels of income as well as national averages.
Results

By 2009, middle-income Canadians had the lowest levels of dental insurance coverage (48.7%) compared to all other income groups. They reported the greatest increase in cost-barriers to dental care, from 12.6% in 1996 to 34.1% by 2009. Middle-income Canadians had the largest rise in out-of-pocket expenditures for dental care since 1978.
Conclusions

This study suggests that affordability issues in accessing dental care are no longer just a problem for the lowest income groups in Canada, but are now impacting middle-income earners as a consequence of their lack of, or decreased access to, comprehensive dental insurance.

Citation: Ramraj C, Sadeghi L, Lawrence HP, Dempster L, Qui?onez C (2013) Is Accessing Dental Care Becoming More Difficult? Evidence from Canada's Middle-Income Population. PLoS ONE 8(2): e57377. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057377

Editor: Robert A. Burne, University of Florida, United States of America

Received: December 3, 2012; Accepted: January 22, 2013; Published: February 20, 2013

Copyright: ? 2013 Ramraj et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors would like to thank the funders of this project, the Population Health Improvement Research Network (PHIRN) of the Applied Health Research Network Initiative (AHRNI), of the Government of Ontario. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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