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Why Doesn’t Medicare Cover Dentistry?

Why Doesn’t Medicare Cover Dentistry?
by Tammy Adams

Medicare is often touted as the gold standard of healthcare for aging Americans. And in many ways, it is.

The massive government program certainly allows seniors to receive care they might not otherwise be able to afford. Many Medicare recipients are on fixed incomes and no longer have employer-covered insurance options to carry them through their retirement years.

Surprisingly, one major gap in traditional Medicare coverage is routine dental care, which includes checkups, cleanings, fillings and extractions. That's right. Many baby boomer patients are paying for their dental care out of pocket. Worse, many seniors are simply not getting the dental care they need because of the cost.

According to a study published in Health Affairs in 2016, in any given year, about 75 percent of low-income Medicare beneficiaries do not receive any dental care at all. Among higher-income beneficiaries, the figure is still about 25 percent.

Separating dental care from the rest of our healthcare has had dramatic effects on both, explained Amber Willink, who served as the lead author of the study and is a researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"As a consequence of avoidable dental problems, the Medicare program bears the cost of expensive emergency department visits and avoidable hospitalizations," she said. "It's lose-lose."

Read full article on MultiBriefs.