For many in Britain, the dentist is never in

LONDON - As if facing the whine of the dentist's drill weren't painful enough, some Britons now have to stand in line for hours to get their teeth poked, prodded and pulled.

In a nation once infamous for the poor state of its teeth, hundreds of people recently lined up in one northeastern England town hoping to sign up with the practice of a dentist newly recruited from the Netherlands.

Newspapers printed photos of a line that stretched around the block and said the scene in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, was reminiscent of World War II-era rationing.

Dentists are quitting Britain's publicly funded National Health Service in large numbers, leaving a growing number of Britons without access to affordable care.

The consequences for the nation's teeth cannot be good, the experts say.

"What's going on in Scarborough is a classic example of the NHS dentist system breaking down completely," said the British Dental Association's chairman, Dr. John Renshaw, whose practice gets 3,000 inquiries a year from people wanting to register as new National Health Service patients.

A 2002 study by the independent Audit Commission found 40 percent of dentists were not accepting new patients through the state-funded system.

Dentists are available to those who can afford private treatment, but Britain's tradition of publicly funded health care means most people expect subsidized treatment. Only about 1-million of Britain's 60-million people have dental insurance.

Unlike medical care, NHS dental treatment is not free, but the cost is about a quarter of what private dentists charge and is capped at $670 per ailment.

Only 44 percent of adults and 60 percent of children are registered with an NHS dentist, government figures show. Most of the rest either pay for private care or simply do not go to the dentist.

Britons have long been the butt of jokes about bad teeth. Recently, the Austin Powers films and The Simpsons played humorously on the stereotype.

The British Dental Association says universities produce too few dentists each year - about 800 - and calls for that to be increased to 1,000.

David Collins of the British Dental Health Foundation said the real problem is not a shortage of dentists, but an underfunded public service that drives many practitioners away.

Many dentists, he said, become frustrated because the NHS reimbursement system forces them to see too many patients too quickly and pays less than they can make in private practice. As a result, many NHS dentists now split their time with private patients.

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