Dispute over financing

Dental fillings likely to be a private service from 2025

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Viacheslav Yakobchuk)

Because dentists and the health insurance company ÖGK cannot agree on the financing issue, many patients are now threatened with an additional charge from 2025 if they are dependent on dental fillings. This is because an EU-wide ban on amalgam fillings will come into force next year.

Further talks between the Medical Association and the ÖGK were originally scheduled for November 14. However, Andreas Huss, chairman of the health insurance fund, has stated that dentists in private practice with a health insurance contract will be paid a maximum of ten percent more for the amalgam substitute, criticized the Dental Association. 

ÖGK chairman Andreas Huss

(Bild: APA/TOBIAS STEINMAURER)

Doctors warn of "massive loss of income"
"As this offer is unacceptable to Austrian dentists for economic reasons, the negotiators of the Austrian Dental Association decided to break off negotiations due to the senselessness associated with Huss' statements," it said in a press release on Friday. If the dentists had followed the ÖGK's proposal, this would have led to a massive loss of income for dentists in private practice.

This would also lead to a further thinning out of nationwide dental care by dentists with health insurance contracts, warned the Dental Association. From January 1, 2025, the 7.4 million people insured with the ÖGK will have to pay for their fillings privately with the dentists treating them and then submit their invoice to the ÖGK in order to receive a refund of part of the invoice amount. The most cost-effective alternative to amalgam, which will then be banned, is glass ionomer cement, which has been used for children and pregnant women since 2018. In addition, composite fillings and inlays made of plastic, ceramic or gold will continue to be offered.

Many services provided by statutory health insurance dentists, such as the extraction of teeth or the repair of dentures, are in deficit or, like the all-important consultation with the patient, are not even paid for by the health insurance fund, according to the Dental Association.