Free dental treatment?

benefitbaby

The above posts are correct, you are not eligible for free dental treatment so please ensure you pay and get a receipt to avoid receiving a nasty bill from the NHS which would also include a penalty fee.

GwylimT

So I posted this in the wrong thread earlier and looked a teeny bit weird, so here goes again! You do have to pay for NHS dental treatment, however if you apply for a HC1 form you may receive some help towards the costs of dental treatment if you have a low household income.

Saversue

Poster has said husband has a reasonable pension and they have savings over 16K, therefore there is no point in applying for help towards dental costs with HC1. Ineligible for any help with medical costs.

Horseunderwater

If the OP is an NHS patient then all the treatment would come to is £214 - which is the current band 3 charge. Her dentist is certainly able to take on NHS as they are telling patients about free NHS treatment. Even though wrongly advised.

Saversue

Horseunderwater wrote: »

If the OP is an NHS patient then all the treatment would come to is £214 - which is the current band 3 charge. Her dentist is certainly able to take on NHS as they are telling patients about free NHS treatment. Even though wrongly advised.

But if Private - the Sky's the Limit.

My Dental Practise went private and as I wanted to stay with them had the choice between pay as you go and Denplan.
Started off at £12 per month now £27. This includes everything but the cost of Lab Work such as crowns and bridges and prescriptions are private of course.
Pay as you go would have cost me thousands for all the work I have had done. This doesn't cover implants, which are a completely separate thing

Sewsosew

Thanks for the further advice everyone. As I said, I don't have a problem with paying and I will. HMRC sent me a cheque for an income tax refund yesterday so that will help.

It is NHS treatment (yes, I know I'm lucky to have an NHS dentist) but since the dentist kept telling me the treatment was free I had no clue on what the cost would be.

skintmacflint

Horseunderwater wrote: »

If the OP is an NHS patient then all the treatment would come to is £214 - which is the current band 3 charge.

Quite a bit dearer if the OP lives in Scotland was £384 last year.

METAL_MICKEY

The patient is ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the benefit declaration made by signing the PR form at the surgery. If you make an incorrect claim albeit unwittingly and despite no attempt to defraud you will be asked to repay the cost of the NHS treatment plus pay a penalty charge of £100 if you had band 2 or band 3 treatment. No amount of blaming the surgery will get you off the penalty and "request for evidence of benefit" process is in reality a bit of a farce.

And I know all this as I used to issue the penalties and represented the NSHBSA when people were stupid enough to let the debt proceed to a civil court hearing.

But now the good news!!!!!!!!!! Capita who run the debt recovery process for the nhsbsa finally realised that issuing county court claims and applying for CCJS was time consuming and not cost effective. So currently they only go after easy targets and conscientious patients who respond to their letters. The ultimate irony being that if you simply ignore all their letters the debt is written off. The threat of issuing a court claim is now just bluff..