The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The latest in a decades-long series of analyses of dental spending in Canada has reached a startling conclusion: spending on dental care as a percentage of total health spending in Canada now ranks second overall (6.3 billion in 1998). Only cardiovascular diseases cost Canadians more (6.82 billion in 1998), according to an article in this month's edition of the Journal of the Canadian Dental Association. This, the third in a series that first looked at the economics of dentistry from the 1960s to 1980, and then again in the 1980s, revealed a number of other trends, according to one of the authors, Dr. James Leake of the University of Toronto. "Governments have tended to shrink their investments in dental care over this period, in spite of increasing awareness of the importance of oral health," said Dr. Leake.
