14 February 2025, 16:40

By Shiv Pabary

You wouldn’t get very far as a baker if the cost of making your loaves exceeded what you got paid. It’s pretty basic economics.

And if our doctors and nurses were expected to pay for care out of their own pockets, our hospitals would surely collapse.

But somehow this is exactly what government expects from NHS dentists.

A decade of savage cuts means your typical practice now loses over £40 making a denture. Over £21 doing a root canal. Over £7 on a new patient exam.

Practices are covering these losses the only way they can - by doing more private work, or simply less loss-making NHS treatment.

Overall this amounts to an effective subsidy of hundreds of millions keeping a struggling service afloat.

Like our GP colleagues high street dentists are not........

© LBC