The year 2025 brings its share of difficulties for Austrian dental patients: initially, there will be no replacement for amalgam, which is then banned as a dental filling material, fully covered by health insurance . The reason is the refusal to negotiate on the part of the Dental Association. The Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK) will now try to conclude separate contracts with individual dentists, its president Andreas Huss said in the Ö1 “Mittagsjournal” on Friday.

The fund would have been willing to pay 20 percent more than before for amalgam-free fillings, promoting the relatively new white material, Alkasit, being tested in health insurance clinics. The Dental Association, on the other hand, wants to accept only the technically inferior glass ionomer cement as free for patients, everything else should be a private service from the point of view of professional representation. The association left ÖGK’s nomination offers for further negotiations unanswered.

Huss was annoyed by this association. “The Dental Association has really let time pass, it is not responsible,” he said in the “Mittagsjournal”. The fund therefore uses the possibility, existing since the last financial equalization, of offering individual contracts to dentists, bypassing the association, with an increase of 20 percent for fillings.

All eleven private dental clinics in Austria have already accepted this offer, according to the ÖGK. The “new good material” Alkasit will also be distributed free of charge in the 61 centers belonging to the health insurance, said Mr. Huss. The new tariff should also benefit practicing dentists, he said, referring to a similar situation in Germany. Therefore, according to the ÖGK president: “I am almost sure that many dentists will participate.”

Anyone who has a filling done by a dentist who refuses the offer will, however, have to advance the fees from next year. According to the ÖGK, the amount of insurance reimbursement, which the patient can then claim, is not yet defined in the statutes.

The president of the Dental Chamber, Birgit Vetter-Scheidl, justified this refusal in the “Mittagsjournal”. According to her, it is particularly unreasonable to expect young colleagues to work at rates that no longer cover costs. The chamber therefore wants changes to the overall contract and the price list. However, there is no negotiation date on this yet.

Criticism of the conflict, from both sides, came from both the FPÖ and the Greens. “The particularly embarrassing and childish quarrels between the Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK) and the Dental Chamber only serve a few ‘vain peacocks’, but certainly not the patients,” said the Austrian Party spokesperson. health freedom, Gerhard Kaniak, in a press release: “Both have a duty to reach an agreement before the end of the year to guarantee adequate care for patients.

Green health spokesperson Ralph Schallmeiner expressed similar sentiments. “We do not have time to engage in mutual blame games, as the ÖGK and ÖZÄK (Austrian Dental Chamber, editor’s note) are currently doing. The conflicting parties must sit down at a table and find a solution for those affected. Patients come first.” , he stressed.

This article has been machine translated, read the original article here.