Medicare Doesn't Equal Dental Care. That Can Be a Big Problem.

Dental care is not covered by traditional Medicare, even though half of beneficiaries have some form of periodontal disease or infection of structures around teeth, including the gums, reports the New York Times . Furthermore, paying for dental care out of pocket is difficult for many beneficiaries. Half have yearly incomes of less than $23,000, while tens of thousands of Americans go to Mexico each year for dental work for less cost. A study published in Health Affairs found in a given year, 75 percent of low-income Medicare beneficiaries do not receive any dental care at all, compared to about 25 percent of higher-income beneficiaries. "The separation of coverage for dental care from the rest of our healthcare has had dramatic effects on both," says Amber Willink 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. It's lose-lose." Traditional Medicare will only cover dental procedures that are integral to other covered services. Willink's study estimated that a Medicare dental benefit that covered 75 percent of the cost of care would boost Medicare premiums by $7 a month, or about 5 percent; the rest would need to be funded by taxes. The cost of such a benefit might be partly countered by reductions in other healthcare spending.