How many times does this need to be said? Just ran a across a study published in a recent issue of the American Journal of Public Health that used public records of Medicare beneficiaries to demonstrate that those "who used preventivedental care had more dental visits but fewer visits for expensivenonpreventive procedures and lower dental expenses than beneficiarieswho saw the dentist only for treatment of oral problems." And thus, the conlusion…"Adding dental coverage for preventive care to Medicarecould pay off in terms of both improving the oral health ofthe elderly population and limiting the costs of expensive nonpreventivedental care for the dentate beneficiary population." Eureka!
The University of Maryland Dental School team of researchers noted that because younger people have primarily been the focus of previous studies of the impact of preventive dental care visits, there was a critical information gap about how preventive dental care might limit expensive nonpreventive dental care procedures among an older population. Researchers identified characteristics of older adults who used preventive and nonpreventive dental care as well as those who used no dental care at all, using data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey.
Study researcher John Moeller, PhD, MA, noted that although private insurance records are not available for study, Medicare records are frequently reliable as indicative of national trends.
Thank you researchers for just one more quantitative argument for providing dental coverage for all.