Children and oral health: assessing needs, coverage, and access
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Policy brief (Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured)
- Author(s):
- Paradise, Julia, author
- Contributor(s):
- Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, issuing body. Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, June 2012
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Dental Care for Children Oral Health United States United States.
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Over a decade ago, Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General -- the first-ever such report -- raised public awareness about the integral connection between oral health and overall physical health and well-being, and documented the personal and public health consequences of inadequate access to oral health care. In 2007, the death of 12-year-old Deamonte Driver from complications of an abscessed tooth, when his mother could not find a Medicaid-participating dentist to treat him, provided tragic evidence of the most devastating costs of lack of care. Yet dental caries, or tooth decay, remains the most common chronic disease among children ages 6-18. According to the most current estimates, more than 40% of U.S. children ages 2 to 11 have decay in their baby teeth, and, among all children ages 6-18, about one-quarter have untreated decay. Dental caries and other oral diseases disproportionately affect low-income children and children of color. Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are major sources of health and dental coverage that reach more than one-third of all American children. Still, in 2009, 19 million children, or about one in four, were uninsured for dental care -- more than twice the number who lacked health insurance that year. Substantial gaps in private dental coverage, low dentist participation in Medicaid, and the high cost of dental care mean that many children today go without recommended preventive and primary oral health care, and also that uninsured families and even those with private health insurance may face difficult out-of-pocket burdens when their children need dental care. Perhaps less widely recognized, low-income adults, including many parents of children covered by Medicaid and CHIP, as well as millions of adults without dependent children, are uniquely disadvantaged in obtaining needed oral health care because so many are uninsured and because, in many states, Medicaid covers little or no adult dental care except tooth extractions. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) achieved major advances for children's health by broadly expanding affordable coverage through Medicaid and private insurance, and also by specifically including pediatric oral health care among the ten "essential health benefits" that all qualified health plans will be required to cover for children beginning in 2014. (Adult dental benefits were not included.)The effect of these reforms will be to extend health coverage, including dental benefits, to millions of children who now lack such coverage. The codification of children's oral health care as an essential health benefit represents a landmark in the ongoing efforts to ensure adequate access to care for all children and to improve the oral health of the nation, which remain urgent health policy challenges in the U.S. today.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (7 pages, 1 unnumbered page))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101591360 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101591360