Five decades later, Medicare finally may cover dental care
Tens of millions of older Americans who cannot afford dental care — with severe consequences for their overall health, what they eat and even when they smile — soon may get help as Democrats maneuver to add dental benefits to Medicare for the first time in its history.
The proposal, part of the large budget bill moving through Congress, would be among the largest changes to Medicare since its creation in 1965. But it would require overcoming resistance from dentists themselves, who are worried that it would pay them too little.
The impact could be enormous for people such as Natalie Hayes, 69. Hayes worked in restaurants, raised a son and managed her health as best she could within her limited means. As she lost her teeth — most of them many years ago and her remaining front ones last fall — she simply lived with it.
“I had a lot of pneumonia,” she said, at a recent visit to the Northern Counties Dental Center in Hardwick, Vt. “Not a lot of good dental care.”
For Hayes, the top set of dentures she was there to get will mean the difference between smiling and not smiling — and a wider choice of food. But financially, this would never be an option if her two sisters had not pooled funds to help her. Although Medicare, the federal program primarily for people 65 and older, helped pay for her pneumonia hospitalizations and recent shoulder surgery, it does not cover dental care.
For reference, she showed Colleen Mercier, a dental assistant, an old photograph.
“You have a pretty smile,” Mercier said
Nearly half of Americans 65 and over didn’t visit a dentist in the past year, and nearly one in five have lost all their natural teeth, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There’s growing evidence that dental problems can worsen other health conditions that Medicare does cover.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT., leader of the Senate Budget Committee, has played a crucial role in advancing the measure. He recalled living in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, 5 miles from the clinic where Hayes received her care, and learning that many residents lacked access to dentists. “A child who lived nearby, his teeth were literally rotting in his mouth,” he said.
Since then, the situation in Vermont has improved. Community health centers serve about a quarter of the state’s population. The state’s Medicaid program pays for preventive care and for up to $1,000 a year in other treatment for children and poor adults. But it does not pay for dentures, which can run into the thousands of dollars. Nationwide, about half of Americans 65 and older lack dental insurance.
With so many uninsured older patients, dentists such as Dr. Adrienne Rulon, who treated Hayes, practice triage. Certain teeth — such as the eye teeth and first molars — are more important to save. Filling a cavity in one tooth is less expensive than a root canal in another. Sometimes, patients will come in for an exam, learn about more expensive problems, then disappear for months while they save money for the procedure. “People are having to pick and choose,” she said. “It’s a huge untreated population.”
Hayes also was making such judgments. A top set of dentures would give her a smile back. But she had also lost most of her bottom molars. Without a partial set of bottom dentures, she still will be unable to chew many hard foods.
Poor adults in other states have even fewer resources. Medicaid is not required to cover adult dental services, and many states do not pay for any services at all. Others cover only emergency treatments, including tooth extractions. Vermont’s program is among the most generous in the nation.
On Capitol Hill, the proposal to add a Medicare dental benefit has near-universal support among Democrats, and many health industry and consumer groups back it, too. The main opposition comes from dentists. With the Democrats’ large policy ambitions but narrow majority, its passage is not ensured.
The American Dental Association, which fought to keep dental care out of the original Medicare program in 1965, supports a limited government benefit for older Americans. The association, whose leaders say they want Congress to concentrate scarce resources on the patients who struggle the most, wants Medicare dental benefits to be offered only to poorer patients, to be offered by private insurers and to be included in its own special part of Medicare.