New research reveals 'heartbreaking' stories behind NZ’s woeful dental statistics
In the middle of last year, Kayli Taylor began asking people to share their painful dental stories with her. She didn't have to search far to uncover them.
"It was concerningly easy to find people," says the researcher and campaigner for advocacy group Action Station Aotearoa.
Taylor found 10 stories, researched them in-depth then turned them into a new research paper called, “I didn't want to smile”.
Her research uncovers the real-world impact of Aotearoa’s prohibitive cost of dental treatment, with research showing 42% of the country can't afford to regularly visit a dentist, and hospitalisation rates for oral health issues are rising.
For her paper, Taylor talked to people who suffered emotional trauma from having poor teeth.
Some had taken on extra jobs to pay for urgent treatment.
Others had gone into debt that would take years to pay off.
One removed her own tooth at home.
"All of them, in different ways, spoke about the consequences in terms of loss of confidence and emotional struggles," Taylor says.
"There were some horrible and traumatic things that people had experienced."
What she found: ‘It will take a lifetime to pay this off’
One person, Anaru, told Taylor he's missed out on career progress because of the state of his teeth. People judge him so much he doesn’t want to smile and covers his mouth with his hand.
"People assume that poor teeth mean you are poor, your parents didn’t care about your oral health when you were a kid, and that you have low intellect," he told Taylor.
Emery told Taylor they hadn’t been able to eat on one side of their mouth since April 2024 because of a split tooth. “It’s not in pain normally, only if I eat on that side, which causes a shockingly sharp and deep ache from the top of my tooth down to my jawbone,” they say.
Aroha owes around $5,400 to the Ministry of Social Development for dentures after having all of her upper teeth removed. She's paying this debt back at $5 per week. "It will take a lifetime to pay this off," she told Taylor.
Just before the country went into a level four lockdown during the Covid pandemic, Nancy was receiving treatment for a painful tooth. "The infection got worse and the tooth turned blue,” she told Taylor. She decided to take it out herself, at home, and ended up in hospital.
The issue, says everyone Taylor talked to, came down to cost. "If services like dental care were free, people would feel confident and comfortable to use them," Nancy, one interviewee, says. "People would be able to care intergenerationally.”
Why is dental care so expensive?
In 2024, the results of a triennial dental survey showed the cost of a typical dentist appointment, including an exam, x-ray, 15-minute clean and composite filling over two surfaces, had risen 23% post-Covid.
In 2020, that work would have cost $428; by 2023, it had risen to $526.
Dr Mo Amso, chief executive of the New Zealand Dental Association, told us the rises were no surprise, and blamed inflation and the impacts of Covid, including supply chain restraints, shipping costs and minimum wage increases for the steep rise.
"There’s very little, to no, government funding,” Amso told us. “It definitely is [a struggle] for what we call the ‘pinched middle’. They are [having] more and more increased costs, but their salaries … aren’t going up to match.”
In 2022, a survey from the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists found 42% of New Zealanders couldn’t afford to go to the dentist, a number that rose to over 50% for Māori and Pasifika.
Taylor’s report says New Zealand’s privatised approach to oral healthcare “is failing our people and our communities” and causing “anxiety, stress, and pain”.
Is there a solution?
After talking to so many people and hearing their struggles with dental care, Taylor believes the only real solution is to mandate free universal dental care for everyone living in Aotearoa.
Action Station Aotearoa released another report in November 2024 that showed the cost of poor dental health was costing the country up to $11 billion a year in social and economic costs.
That’s because, “people are taking sick days and people are ending up in hospital and people have got heart disease,” over their poor oral health, says Taylor.
Some movement in this space was made in the last election, with the Green Party campaigning for free universal health care, and Labour offering a system in which it would be free for those under 30.
Taylor says she will be joining Action Station Aotearoa on a roadshow around the country to raise awareness about her report and dental care in Aotearoa in the lead-in to the next election.
She hopes it helps sway the decision-makers to do something about the issue. It is, she believes, an easy decision to make once you’ve heard these stories.
“We have the economic resources in this country, and we have the vision, and we have the potential, and we could just do it,” she says.
“The problem is solvable.”
More information
- Find out how to access dental services in our report on rising dental costs.
- How much should you pay to go to the dentist? Find out in our guide to going to the dentist.
- Read Kayli Taylor’s “I didn't want to smile” report.
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