For new Albertans, it is a rite of passage to be utterly floored at the sky-high price of dental care. Prices average an incredible 20 to 30 per cent higher than anywhere else in Canada — with certain procedures costing as much as double.
B.C. border towns are reporting a swift business in catering to desperate Alberta dental tourists, cavities are rising as Albertans eschew checkups and the NDP is already one year into a review to figure out how to tame the province’s dental beast.
But what gives? When did good teeth get so darned extravagant in Alberta?
• Dentistry isn’t just expensive in Alberta, it’s really, really, insanely expensive
There was the Albertan who was quoted $60,000 for a dental procedure, then found it for $20,000 in B.C. There was the Alberta newcomer who went for a checkup with her son and was hit with a $900 bill. An average Calgary checkup exam is $209, but only $99 in B.C., according to data from Sun Life Financial and the B.C. Dental Association. The average insurance payout for a 30-minute tooth cleaning is $110 in Ontario — but $140 in Alberta, according to the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. Alberta’s dental prices are “generally considered (some) of the highest in North America,” according to a November report by the Alberta School Employee Benefit Plan, a major insurer. So yes, despite occasional claims to the contrary, Alberta definitely has a thing with shockingly high dental prices.
• Despite decreasing demand, it’s only getting worse
A 10-year analysis by the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association found that prices were rising an average of 5.6 per cent each year in Alberta; more than twice the rate seen in Ontario or B.C. If this rate of increase remains constant, a procedure that currently costs $100 will have ballooned to $13,000 by the year 2116. And a recession does not appear to have slowed it down. Mass layoffs and an exodus of workers have generally decreased demand for dental care. Despite this, insurance companies have reported to Alberta clients that dental rates are continuing their disproportionate rise.
• Unlike everywhere else in Canada, most dentists won’t even tell you what they charge
Getty Images“If you think this hurts, wait until you get the bill.”
In all other provinces, the government or a dental association will publish a “fee schedule” listing suggested prices for standard procedures. For instance, the B.C. Dental Association has a “suggested fee guide” — and individual dentists can then structure their pricing accordingly. But it is a tiny minority of Alberta dentists who will even post their rates. In the Calgary area, in fact, only one dentist had a website telling would-be patients what they would be expected to pay. Advertising, meanwhile, is subject to strict controls from the Alberta Dental Association. An Alberta dentist, for instance, might lose his licence if he takes out an ad implying that his “services are superior in quality to other dentists.” Insurers have tried to shine some light on the issue by publishing “dental fee finders.” It’s through these that a Postmedia analysis was able to find that Alberta’s cheapest dentist is in Hanna, the town of 2,700 that spawned the band Nickelback. But the dentist, Dave Warwick, gave an eerie answer when asked if he ever touted his “cheapest in Alberta” status. “I think most dentists are afraid of running afoul of the (Alberta dental) college so they don’t bother to advertise their fees,” he said.
• But … how? How is it so expensive?
The Alberta Dental Association used to publish an annual fee schedule. But in 1997 it stopped. The idea was to open up the market to competition but, as noted above, it’s hard for customers to be discriminating when nobody know what anything costs. Imagine if gas stations all started charging wildly different prices for gas — and then took down the big signs advertising their per-litre rate. And then, let’s also imagine that rather than paying for their own fill-ups, most Albertans had their gas prices subsidized through an employee benefits package. The inevitable result is that drivers would stop caring whether they went to an 80 cents/litre station or a $1/litre station. Faced with such a detached clientele, the stations would quickly learn to stop charging less than $1 for a litre of gas. The Official Opposition Wildrose party, for one, has maintained that the problem with dental rates is that Albertans have been handcuffed by a lack of transparency. Competition “has been absent from our dental market,” the party wrote in a February statement.
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• Dentists blame hygienists and regulations
On the semi-frequent occasion it is asked why everything is so expensive, the Alberta Dental Association will usually cite high staffing costs and a higher bar in Alberta for preventing infection. Indeed, an Alberta hygienist is pricey. The median hourly wage for an Alberta dental hygienist is $53, with an average annual salary of $78,832. Canada-wide, the median hourly wage is $34. Cross the border into B.C. or Saskatchewan, and it’s $40. Alberta has no provincial sales tax, lower overall property taxes and low fuel costs, but dentists wouldn’t be the first industry to complain that they’re getting hit hard in the payroll department.
• A bunch of stuff in Alberta is weirdly overpriced
Two decades of oil boom can do strange things to a place. After enjoying some of the highest overall wages in the Western world, it’s a common phenomenon that Albertans often seem to have no idea what things cost anywhere else. Despite a privatized, lower-taxed liquor sector, the province has some of the highest alcohol prices in Canada. At provincial first minister’s gatherings, the Alberta premier is the highest paid. Alberta teachers make more than in any other province. Even Alberta Kijiji seems to be curiously filled with products that are unsettlingly expensive. So, Alberta’s sky-high dental work arguably fits into a larger pattern: four million people spend 20 years earning piles of money and not looking too hard at price tags, and the economy responds accordingly.
• Email: thopper@nationalpost.com | Twitter: TristinHopper