National health care and the public's oral health

This article presents an outline of a proposal for a national health program, together with a discussion of the necessity of inclusion of dentistry for optimum benefit to the public. A thorough restructuring of current principles of coverage, benefits, methods of payment, administration, and methods of protection of the public is proposed. Disease prevention and the role and responsibility of public health dentistry would be enhanced in such a scheme. Current total dental care expenditures should be sufficient to cover most of the costs. It is the author's belief that further tinkering with the existing health care system and the application of more bandaids can only exacerbate existing problems.