THE Federal Government is threatening to axe nearly one million individual dental services under its new program unless the Opposition gives way in the Senate and votes down the existing Medicare dental scheme for the chronically ill.

The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, yesterday stepped up her campaign to force the closure of the Medicare scheme which offers benefits of up to $4,250 in major dental work and dentures for those with chronic medical conditions.

The Coalition so far has blocked the Government's plans in the Senate and there is no guarantee of independent and Greens senators' support.

Ms Roxon said failure to remove the Medicare program would mean that $290 million over three years would have to be withdrawn from its new Commonwealth Dental Health Program.

She said that unless the Government was able to end the Medicare service, she would have to reduce spending on the Commonwealth program which would mean NSW patients would lose about 327,200 services costing more than $90 million.

The Commonwealth program has yet to begin in NSW because the state and federal government are yet to complete funding negotiations.

But the Medicare dental scheme introduced in its current form last November has proved popular, particularly with disadvantaged people in need of costly dental treatment, according to dentists and doctors.

Ms Roxon has argued that the Medicare scheme is poorly targeted because patients had to have a chronic medical illness to qualify for the dental benefits.

The Association for the Promotion of Oral Health has called for the retention of Medicare dental, stating that about 10 per cent of the population had chronic conditions, many of them requiring dental treatment while Labor's Commonwealth scheme was poorly funded and likely to provide realistic care for only a fraction of the estimated 600,000 people needing care.

But Ms Roxon said yesterday the new program would mean that hundreds of thousands of Australians would have improved access to dental health services while the strain on the hospital system would be reduced by delivering more accessible and better targeted dental care.

"In doing so it would help to reduce the 50,000 preventable hospital admissions for dental conditions every year," she said.