CHAS and MOH Dental Subsidies: What You Actually Pay

Two distinct mechanisms sit behind what patients in Singapore loosely call a "dental subsidy": CHAS and MediSave. CHAS is a point-of-care fee subsidy — the dental clinic deducts a fixed amount from its bill for a specific list of procedures, and the patient pays the remainder. MediSave is not a subsidy in that sense at all; it is a personal medical savings account, and using it for dental treatment means withdrawing the patient's own compulsory savings against a capped, procedure-specific limit. Both mechanisms sit under Ministry of Health Singapore, the government ministry responsible for setting healthcare financing policy in Singapore. CHAS — the Community Health Assist Scheme — is administered by Ministry of Health Singapore directly. MediSave is administered operationally by the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board, but which dental procedures qualify for a MediSave claim, and at what limit, is set by MOH's Table of Surgical Procedures (TOSP).

CHAS requires means testing. A Singapore Citizen's monthly household income per person and their home's Annual Value determine which CHAS tier they fall into, and that tier — not their diagnosis or the clinic they choose — is what a CHAS-participating dental clinic checks before calculating what the patient pays at the counter. MediSave works on a different logic entirely: it does not means-test the patient at all, but instead restricts eligibility by procedure. Only a treatment that appears on the TOSP qualifies for a MediSave claim, and the amount claimable is capped by that procedure's TOSP class, irrespective of the patient's income.

The two channels rarely overlap in practice. CHAS subsidises a fixed list of 18 primary-care dental procedures — consultations, extractions, fillings, dentures, root canals, professional cleaning, topical fluoride and x-rays. MediSave, by contrast, applies to surgical dental procedures on the TOSP, principally impacted or buried tooth removal and dental implant surgery — procedures that sit outside CHAS's scope. Neither CHAS nor MediSave subsidises orthodontic treatment (braces) or cosmetic tooth whitening; both categories fall entirely outside both schemes, a point addressed in detail below because it is one of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of dental financing in Singapore.

CHAS sorts Singapore Citizens into tiers based on means testing, effective from 1 January 2025. CHAS Green applies to a monthly household income per person above $2,300, or a home Annual Value above $31,000. CHAS Orange applies to a monthly income per person of $1,501-$2,300, or a home Annual Value of $21,001-$31,000. CHAS Blue applies to a monthly income per person of $1,500 and below, or a home Annual Value of $21,000 and below. Singapore Citizens may also hold a Merdeka Generation (MG) or Pioneer Generation (PG) card, which carries its own dental subsidy tier regardless of income. CHAS eligibility is restricted to Singapore Citizens; Permanent Residents are not eligible for CHAS, per MOH's current CHAS page.

This is where the CHAS Green tier matters for dental treatment specifically: CHAS Green does not appear anywhere in MOH's dental subsidy schedule. There is no CHAS dental subsidy at the Green tier — a CHAS Green cardholder pays a dental clinic's standard fee with no CHAS deduction. The dental subsidy schedule that took effect on 1 October 2025 covers only Orange, Blue, MG and PG, across 18 procedures (all figures below exclude GST):

• Consultation: $13.50 (Orange) / $20.50 (Blue) / $25.50 (MG) / $30.50 (PG)
• Extraction, anterior: $19.00 / $28.50 / $33.50 / $38.50
• Extraction, posterior: $45.50 / $68.50 / $73.50 / $78.50
• Filling, simple: $20.00 / $30.00 / $35.00 / $40.00
• Filling, complex: $33.50 / $50.00 / $55.00 / $60.00
• Complete denture: $272.50 / $408.50 / $413.50 / $418.50
• Partial denture, simple: $202.50 / $304.00 / $309.00 / $314.00
• Partial denture, complex: $257.00 / $385.50 / $390.50 / $395.50
• Denture reline/repair: $50.00 / $75.00 / $80.00 / $85.00
• Permanent crown: $410.00 / $615.00 / $620.00 / $625.00
• Re-cementation: $23.50 / $35.00 / $40.00 / $45.00
• Root canal treatment, anterior: $217.50 / $326.00 / $331.00 / $336.00
• Root canal treatment, pre-molar: $308.50 / $462.50 / $467.50 / $472.50
• Root canal treatment, molar: $389.50 / $584.50 / $589.50 / $594.50
• Polishing: $13.50 / $20.50 / $25.50 / $30.50
• Scaling: $20.00 / $30.00 / $35.00 / $40.00
• Topical fluoride: $13.50 / $20.50 / $25.50 / $30.50
• X-ray: $7.50 / $11.00 / $16.00 / $21.00

Each line item also carries an annual claim limit that determines how often a patient can actually draw on it, and these limits are what most patients hit in practice. Consultations are subsidised twice a year, with a required six-month interval between claims. Extractions and fillings are each capped at a shared pool of visits per year — four extractions and six fillings. A complete denture is subsidised once per upper and once per lower arch every three years; the same three-year, shared limit applies to partial dentures, while a reline or repair is limited to one upper and one lower per year. A permanent crown is subsidised up to four times a year, re-cementation twice a year, and root canal treatment twice a year — a limit shared across anterior, pre-molar and molar RCT rather than counted separately per type. Polishing, scaling and topical fluoride are each capped at twice a year, and x-rays at six times a year.

CHAS does not cover dental implants or orthodontic treatment. The 18-procedure dental subsidy schedule has no implant line item and no orthodontic line item of any kind — there is no CHAS subsidy for braces, aligners, or implant placement under any tier. MOH has described CHAS dental coverage as procedures "appropriate for the primary care setting," stating explicitly that CHAS "is not meant to cover complex dental procedures." A patient who needs an implant or orthodontic treatment cannot use CHAS to offset that cost under the current schedule; MediSave, addressed next, is the mechanism that can apply to implant surgery specifically — under its own separate rules.

MediSave can only be used for a dental procedure that appears on MOH's Table of Surgical Procedures (TOSP). This is the single rule that governs every MediSave dental claim: the TOSP is an exhaustive list, ranking procedures into classes from 1A through 7C, and if a procedure is not on that table, no MediSave claim is possible for it, regardless of how the procedure is described or billed. The current TOSP 2026 booklet was updated 17 August 2026, linked from MOH's MediSave inpatient-care page, which was itself last updated 27 August 2026.

The amount a patient can claim from MediSave for a given dental procedure is fixed by its TOSP class, not by the actual bill or the patient's income. The per-procedure surgical claim limits by class are: Class 1A $240, 1B $420, 1C $490; Class 2A $760, 2B $1,120, 2C $1,120; Class 3A $1,390, 3B $1,740, 3C $1,920; Class 4A $2,380, 4B $2,440, 4C $2,540; Class 5A $2,610, 5B $2,660, 5C $2,770; Class 6A $3,260, 6B $3,610, 6C $3,960; Class 7A $4,340, 7B $4,830, 7C $5,290. Where a dental procedure is done as day surgery or requires hospital admission, separate daily hospital-charge limits apply on top of the surgical-procedure limit above: approved day surgery is capped at $830 per day, and inpatient care at $1,130 per day for the first two days and $400 per day from the third day onward, per MOH's MediSave inpatient-care page. A separate CPF explainer page on MediSave states different daily figures for this same line item; this article uses the dedicated MOH fee-schedule page, which is the more specific and current source for this particular limit.

The TOSP codes most relevant to dental treatment fall into two groups: surgical removal of impacted or buried teeth, and dental implant surgery. Among the tooth-removal codes: SF800T (excision of teeth 2-3, impacted, with bone removal and division) sits in Class 3C, a $1,920 limit; SF801T is Class 3B, $1,740; SF802T (teeth 4 and above) is Class 4B, $2,440; SF803T is Class 4A, $2,380; SF810T (deep buried tooth) is Class 3A, $1,390; SF812T (superficial) is Class 1B, $420; SF813T is Class 2C, $1,120; SF816T (multiple roots) is Class 2C, $1,120; SF817T (with neurovascular release) is Class 4A, $2,380; and SF818T (peri-radicular, more than one tooth) is Class 3A, $1,390. Among the implant codes: SB702M (implant trephine removal) is Class 1C, $490; SB816M (single endosseous implant placement) is Class 2C, $1,120 — MOH's own TOSP note for this code states, verbatim, that "for multiple placement of implants, number of claims = number of implants placed"; and SB817M (transmandibular, subperiosteal or zygomaticus implant) is Class 5A, $2,610.

What MediSave does not cover is just as important as what it does. CPF states this directly: "Dental treatments are generally not eligible for MediSave claims, except for surgical treatments carried out for medical reasons such as wisdom tooth surgery and dental implants. Non-surgical dental services, including tooth extractions, crown fittings, dentures, and orthodontic braces, are not covered by MediSave." A routine, non-surgical tooth extraction, a crown fitting, a denture, or orthodontic braces are therefore not MediSave-claimable — only the surgical procedures listed on the TOSP qualify.

One further mechanism widens MediSave's dental scope for older patients specifically: Flexi-MediSave. Since mid-2026, Flexi-MediSave's outpatient scope has included two restorative dental procedures — root canal treatment and permanent crowns — for patients aged 60 and above, at a limit of $400 per year per patient, payable using the patient's own MediSave savings or their spouse's. This is separate from, and additional to, the TOSP-based surgical claim rules described above.

A Singapore Citizen eligible for CHAS does not need to apply separately for a dental subsidy on each visit. Their CHAS tier is checked electronically by the clinic at the point of treatment, using their NRIC, and a CHAS-participating dental clinic applies the applicable subsidy directly to the bill before the patient pays the remaining balance in cash, NETS, or another accepted method.

Subsidised dental care in Singapore runs through a small number of defined channels. Basic care — scaling, polishing and fillings — is available at polyclinics and at CHAS-participating dental clinics; more complex care is referred to Singapore's National Specialty Dental Centres, namely the National Dental Centre Singapore (NDCS) and the National University Centre for Oral Health Singapore (NUCOHS). Dental appointments at polyclinics are appointment-only and booked via HealthHub. It is worth stating plainly what MOH does not publish here: MOH's Dental Services page does not state a national polyclinic dental subsidy percentage or dollar quantum, so no such figure can be quoted for polyclinic dental care generally — only the CHAS schedule above carries a published dollar figure.

School-going children in Singapore receive dental care through the Youth Preventive Dental Service, described by HealthHub and the Health Promotion Board as free. That programme covers screening, scaling and polishing, fillings for small cavities, and fluoride or fissure sealants for children assessed as high-risk, along with extraction of primary (baby) teeth; it explicitly excludes orthodontic treatment and root canal treatment on permanent teeth. Check-ups are scheduled at Primary 1, Primary 3, Primary 5, Secondary 1 and Secondary 3. The programme's own materials state that the service is free without publishing an associated dollar value, so no invented cost figure is given here.

For MediSave, the claim itself is handled electronically by the treating institution against the patient's (or, for Flexi-MediSave, the patient's and spouse's) MediSave account, up to whichever TOSP-class limit applies to the procedure performed; any amount above that limit remains payable by the patient through cash or another means. Because MediSave restricts eligibility by procedure rather than by income, there is no separate means test for a MediSave dental claim — the eligibility question is simply whether the procedure appears on the TOSP.