Hungary: Favorite Dental Tourism Destination

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Shocking Prices Send Britons Overseas on Medical Vacations

The Institute for Medical Technology Assessment at Erasmus University in Rotterdam in the Netherlands has recently undertaken a survey comparing dental costs across Europe.  As other surveys have recently found, the UK ranked as the most expensive country in Europe.  Shockingly, a simple filling in the UK can cost 19 times more than in the cheapest countries in Europe.  The study reports that a filling in the UK costs around £117, £101 in Italy, £94 in Spain, and £50 in Germany.  The least expensive fillings can be found in dental tourism destinations like Hungary, at just £6 a piece. 

Save on the Cost of Dentures and Teeth Whitening

Such a situation is fueling the rise of Britons taking medical vacations to countries like Hungary and Poland, popular dental tourism destinations.  According to the Daily Mail, 331,100 Britons sought dental treatment abroad in 2006.  The cost of dentures, dental bridges, and virtually every other dental procedure is cheaper in Eastern Europe.  The number of Britons taking medical vacations is expected to rise if the price of dental care in the UK continues to inflate. 

Medical Vacations Help Britons Afford Dental Care

The cost of dentures didn’t always send people overseas, so why is dental work now so expensive in the UK?  Author Swan Tan of the Daily Mail reports it is because UK dentists charge a lot for their time.  Tan says labor costs are the most important factor driving up costs across Europe, although the practice is acutely felt the most in the UK.  Labor costs, says Tan, “accounted for 70 percent of total costs in England,” amounting sometimes to as much as £2.16 a minute.  The average income for a dentist with their own practice in 2004-5 was £105,000.  Increasingly, dentists are taking on more private work, rather than work with the lower paying NHS.  For example, in 2004-5, 52 percent of the average dentist’s income came from private work, whereas in 1999-2000, it was only six percent.