Why Australians Are Flying Overseas for Dental Care

A Scenario Many Australians Recognise

Consider a fictional but entirely realistic scenario: a teacher in her late forties, living in a regional Queensland city, who spent three years avoiding the dentist after losing her extras insurance. By the time she sits in the chair, she needs two crowns, a root canal, and a cracked molar extracted. The dentist’s treatment plan quotes $9,400. Her tax return is $1,700. She has no extras cover.

She starts researching. Within twenty minutes she has found a clinic in Bali advertising the same treatment plan — all four items — for $2,800. She checks flights: $380 return to Denpasar. She reads the reviews. She books the flights.

There is nothing unusual about this story. Versions of it play out tens of thousands of times a year across Australia. The decision is not irrational, not reckless, and not uninformed. It is a rational response to a system that has — for most of its history — treated dental care as a luxury rather than a health need.

The Numbers: How Expensive Australia Has Become

The scale of Australia’s dental cost problem is visible in the data, but the data rarely appears in the same place at once.

Total Australian dental expenditure reached $12.5 billion in 2022–23, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Health Expenditure Australia 2022–23 report. Of that, $7.6 billion — 61 per cent — was paid directly out of pocket by patients, making dental the single largest source of out-of-pocket health expenditure in the country. For context, out-of-pocket spending on all other healthcare services combined — GPs, specialists, pathology, imaging — typically involves a Medicare safety net. Dental does not.

The trajectory is as concerning as the absolute figure. Out-of-pocket dental costs grew from $5.7 billion in 2012–13 to $7.6 billion in 2022–23 — an increase of $1.9 billion, or 33 per cent, over a decade in which wages grew far more slowly (AIHW).

The impact on behaviour is documented. A 2021 National Dental Telephone Interview Survey by the Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health (ARCPOH) at the University of Adelaide found that 32 per cent of Australians avoided or delayed dental care due to cost in the preceding twelve months. The disparity between the insured and uninsured is stark: the same research found 47 per cent of Australians without private health insurance reported avoiding dental care due to cost, compared with 19 per cent of those with insurance (AIHW).

More recent data from the Australian Dental Association (ADA) Dental Health Week Survey 2024 shows the problem worsening. The survey found 61 per cent of respondents had delayed dental treatment in the previous 12 months — up 17 per cent over the preceding 13 years. Of those who delayed, 63 per cent cited affordability as the reason, up 12 per cent from 2022. A separate 2024 survey conducted via MediaNet and referenced by the ADA found 80 per cent of Australians report struggling with dental costs — a figure that, if it represents the general population, would be extraordinary by the standards of any developed country.

The burden falls disproportionately on low-income Australians. Research published in 2025 by Hopcraft and Singh in Sage Journals found that routine dental costs represent 18.6 to 25.3 per cent of weekly income for households in the lowest income quartile. To put that in context: a $250 dental scale and clean, the most basic preventive appointment available, would consume nearly a quarter of a week’s take-home pay for a low-income Australian. For a crown at $2,000, the figure is closer to two months’ income.

And yet, despite this, over 85 per cent of dental care in Australia is provided privately (AIHW). The public dental system exists — and provides important care for eligible patients — but it is substantially underfunded relative to demand, with waiting lists in some states extending to several years for non-urgent treatment.

Why Dental Was Left Out of Medicare

To understand the current situation, it helps to understand how it came to be.

When Gough Whitlam’s Labor government launched Medibank in 1975 — the precursor to Medicare — dental care was explicitly excluded from the universal health insurance scheme. The exclusion was not accidental. The Australian Dental Association lobbied strongly against inclusion, concerned that a national dental scheme would reduce fee autonomy and introduce the kind of bulk-billing culture that would later characterise general practice. Government negotiators, under pressure to contain the scheme’s cost, accommodated the exclusion.

The consequence of that 1975 decision has compounded for fifty years. While medical services — GP visits, specialist consultations, most pathology and imaging — attracted a Medicare rebate that anchored fees to a publicly visible schedule, dental services developed entirely within the private market. Fees are set by individual practitioners, with no legislated schedule. The ADA publishes a “recommended fee” guide, but compliance is voluntary and many practices charge above it. Consumers have no reference point for whether a quote is reasonable.

A Medicare dental scheme has been proposed, debated, and abandoned multiple times in the decades since 1975. The most substantive attempt was the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, introduced under the Howard government and later modified under Labor, which provided Medicare rebates for dental treatment in specific clinical circumstances. It was widely criticised for being poorly targeted, easily rorted, and expensive relative to its public health impact, and was ultimately replaced by the Child Dental Benefits Schedule under the Gillard government. Adults on low incomes continue to rely on a patchwork of state-run public dental services, community health centres, and charity dental programs — none of which reach the 32 per cent of Australians who are avoiding care.

Who Is Making the Trip and Why: Profile of the 10,000

Industry estimates suggest up to 10,000 Australians travel overseas for dental care annually (MGA Dental; industry consensus). The true figure is difficult to pin down — no government agency tracks dental tourism specifically — but the number is generally agreed to have grown substantially over the past decade.

The patients making this trip are not a single demographic. Interviews with dental tourism facilitators and clinics in Bali, Thailand, and Vietnam consistently describe several recurring patient types:

The uninsured middle-income patient is the most common: a working Australian — a tradesperson, small business owner, teacher, nurse — who cannot access public dental care (income too high, not eligible) but whose out-of-pocket costs for major treatment are large relative to savings. For this patient, a full set of implants or an All-on-4 arch replacement represents a year’s savings. The same treatment overseas, including flights and accommodation, represents a month’s work.

The self-funded retiree represents a growing segment. Retired Australians on fixed incomes — drawing down superannuation, living on a combination of super and pension — have left employer-provided health insurance, often allowed extras cover to lapse as premiums rose, and now face major dental bills with no predictable income growth ahead. For a retired couple, a $30,000 combined dental bill is not abstract — it is a meaningful portion of remaining savings.

The patient who has been avoiding care is perhaps the most concerning. Years of deferred treatment accumulate. The $300 filling that was avoided becomes the $2,000 root canal that becomes the $5,000 implant. By the time this patient engages with the dental system, the treatment plan is large enough that the overseas savings are genuinely transformative.

The informed research-led traveller is a smaller but growing group: patients who have researched specific clinics extensively, used dental tourism platforms to verify accreditation, read hundreds of patient reviews, consulted their local dentist about what they need, and approached the trip with the same due diligence they would apply to any major financial decision. For this patient, dental tourism can work well.

What unites almost all of them is a fundamental fact: they are not failing the system. The system is failing them.

Where They Go: Bali, Thailand, and Vietnam

Bali, Indonesia

Bali is the most popular dental tourism destination for Australians, largely because of proximity — direct flights from major Australian capitals take 6 to 8 hours, and the flight cost is comparatively low ($300–$600 return from many ports). The island’s established tourist infrastructure means patients can combine treatment with a holiday, offsetting some of the psychological cost of travel.

Typical prices for common procedures in Bali: a single dental implant (implant, abutment, crown) at a mid-range clinic runs $850–$1,500 AUD. A porcelain crown costs approximately $200–$450 AUD. Veneers range from $300–$650 per tooth. Compare these to Australian equivalents: implants at $3,000–$7,000 AUD, crowns at $1,500–$2,500, veneers at $1,500–$2,500 per tooth.

Quality in Bali is highly variable. At one end of the market are premium international clinics with JCI-accredited processes, specialist-grade equipment including 3D CBCT imaging, branded implant systems (Straumann, Nobel Biocare), and dentists with postgraduate training from Australian, European, or North American universities. At the other end are clinics catering to high tourist volumes with less rigorous standards. The price gap between the two is significant; so is the outcome gap.

Thailand

Bangkok is consistently rated the strongest dental tourism destination by infrastructure metrics. Thailand has developed one of the world’s most sophisticated medical tourism ecosystems, with several dental clinics operating within or alongside JCI-accredited hospitals — a standards framework roughly equivalent to Australian hospital accreditation. English-language capability at premium Bangkok clinics is high. Implant costs range from approximately $1,500–$3,000 AUD at reputable clinics.

The main deterrent for Australians is flight time: Bangkok is 9–11 hours from most Australian capitals, and return fares typically run $700–$1,200 AUD. For simple single-procedure cases, the travel overhead is significant relative to the saving. For complex cases — All-on-4, full-mouth rehabilitation — the calculus is different.

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Hanoi have grown rapidly as dental tourism destinations for Australians. Vietnam offers quality broadly comparable to Bangkok at slightly lower prices — implants run approximately $1,000–$2,500 AUD at well-regarded clinics — with flight times of 9–10 hours from eastern Australia. The dental tourism sector in Vietnam is newer than Thailand’s, which means some clinics have excellent credentials and some do not; patient-led research and verified platforms are particularly important here.

What Can Go Wrong: Four Risk Categories

The savings offered by overseas dental treatment are real. So are the risks. Neither should be dismissed, and patients deserve an honest account of both.

1. The Aftercare Gap

Dental treatment — particularly implants, root canals, and complex prosthodontics — requires follow-up. In Australia, your treating dentist sees you at one week, one month, six months, and annually. If something is developing poorly, it is caught early and managed cheaply. When your treating dentist is in Bali or Bangkok, this follow-up is either unavailable or requires another expensive trip. Australian dentists who see patients after overseas treatment report that complications caught late are invariably more expensive to treat than complications caught early.

2. Infection and Sterilisation Risk

Australian dental practices operate under mandatory infection control standards governed by the Australian Dental Board and AHPRA guidelines, with regular auditing. These standards are not uniformly replicated across all overseas clinics. Inadequate autoclave sterilisation, non-sterile irrigation water, reuse of single-use instruments, and substandard personal protective equipment are documented risks in lower-tier clinics. The consequences range from localised post-operative infection (requiring antibiotics and potential drainage) to, in rare cases, transmission of blood-borne pathogens.

3. Insurance and Financial Protection Gaps

Most standard travel insurance policies explicitly exclude planned dental tourism and complications arising from pre-arranged elective dental procedures (refer to individual Product Disclosure Statements — this is standard across major Australian travel insurers including Cover-More, Southern Cross, Allianz Travel). The distinction insurers make is between emergency dental care (covered for most policies, typically to $1,000–$2,500 AUD) and elective procedures the patient travelled specifically to receive (excluded). Specialist dental tourism insurance products exist but typically carry low coverage limits and multiple exclusions.

4. Legal and Regulatory Void

If dental treatment goes wrong in Australia, you have access to AHPRA, the Dental Board, your state’s Health Care Complaints Commission, and Australian civil courts. These protections apply to every registered Australian dentist. None of them apply to a dental clinic in Bali, Bangkok, or Hanoi. Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese dental practitioners are not subject to Australian registration requirements. Pursuing legal action in foreign jurisdictions is, for most patients, practically impossible — requiring local legal representation, translation, and proceedings in a foreign language. In practical terms, if overseas dental work fails, the patient bears the cost of correction with no recourse against the provider.

What Needs to Change: The Policy Case

The dental tourism phenomenon is not primarily a story about adventurous patients or rogue overseas clinics. It is a story about a healthcare system that has excluded 22 million adults from routine subsidised dental care for fifty years.

Three policy reforms are consistently advanced by dental health researchers and advocates:

Universal Medicare dental coverage: The most impactful change would be extending Medicare to cover a basic package of preventive and restorative dental care for all adult Australians — at minimum, a scale and clean, examination, X-rays, and basic fillings annually. The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce (2022) flagged oral health as an area requiring attention; the 2023 Dental Benefits Review recommended staged expansion of public dental services. The cost is real but would be partially offset by reduced emergency department presentations for dental pain, which currently run to tens of thousands per year in every state.

Fee transparency: Australia has no requirement for dental practices to publish fee schedules. Patients cannot compare prices between providers without contacting multiple clinics individually. A standardised fee disclosure framework — similar to what exists for medical specialists under the Medical Costs Finder tool — would allow informed consumer choice and create competitive pressure on fees.

Private health insurance reform: Australian dental extras insurance has a fundamental problem: the premiums required to access meaningful major dental cover — $3,000–$5,000 annually for a couple — are often approaching the cost of the treatment itself. The Senate’s 2022 Private Health Insurance inquiry found that the number of Australians with extras cover was declining, and that many who maintained cover were finding the benefit-to-premium ratio deteriorating. Reforms to minimum benefit requirements and premium transparency for dental extras would improve the value proposition.

None of these changes will happen quickly. In the meantime, the 10,000 Australians who travel overseas each year, and the far larger number who simply avoid or delay care, are making rational decisions within an irrational system.

Conclusion: A Systemic Problem, Not a Personal Failure

The Australian who books a flight to Bali for dental work is not being irresponsible. They are responding rationally to a price signal that the system has been sending for decades: dental care in Australia is expensive, unsubsidised for most adults, and increasingly unaffordable for a growing proportion of the population.

The risks of overseas dental treatment are real and deserve honest acknowledgement — not to shame patients who go overseas, but to ensure they go informed. Choose a clinic with documented accreditation and specialist-grade infrastructure. Use a verified platform to check credentials. Bring all records home. Have a local dentist ready before you go.

And if you are in Townsville and have been putting off treatment because of cost, it is worth having a conversation with us before booking flights. We offer transparent pricing, payment plans that spread the cost over 12 to 18 months, and a team that has helped many patients find a path through treatment that does not require a passport.

Book an appointment at Townsville Dental Clinic for a no-obligation consultation.

Related Articles

• The True Cost of Dental Tourism for Australians
• Dental Tourism: Is Getting Implants Overseas Worth It?
• What Happens When Bali Dental Work Goes Wrong Back in Australia
• Dental Tourism in Bali: The Complete Guide for Australians
• Is Bali Safe for Dental Work? What the Evidence Says
• Red Flags: How to Spot an Unsafe Dental Clinic in Bali
• Best Dental Tourism Destinations for Australians 2026
• Afterpay Dentist Townsville
• Dental Implants in Townsville